Review of ‘Partisan (T1)’: the pleasure of not knowing

The first images of ‘Partisan’ are of real impact: a bound teenager falls head downward into the void, hits the water and seems to drown at the bottom. Probably the best start to series seen this year. One of those starts that makes you feel in good hands, or in the best kind of danger; impression later confirmed by a plot development somewhat less opaque but never obvious. Best series in the latest edition of the prestigious Canneseries festival, ‘Partisan’ is a defense of the pleasure of not knowing.

We are used to having characters say (or are told) their name and occupation soon after they appear on screen, but do not expect that this time. Here the information is dosed in a slow and ambiguous way and the viewer is invited to doubt about it, or to wonder why he doubts about it: nobody wants to believe that the protagonist (the great Lebanese actor Fares Fares, cocreador junto a Amir Chamdin) his name is Johnny just because he has Arab features. As in other less sunny examples of Scandinavian ‘noir’, any idea of ​​Sweden as a country open to the idea of ​​the other is subtly but starkly overthrown. In this context, the use of an antifascist hymn like ‘The partisan’ (in the classic version of Leonard Cohen 1969) as the first song on the soundtrack cannot be accidental.

Johnny has started working as an (apparent) carrier for an (apparent) organic farm split into something else, “a sect or something like that”. This last definition is from the troublesome orphan Nicole (Sofia Karemyr), transferred there with her sister Maria (Ylvali Rurling) to (apparently) just get through the summer. What seems like an idyllic community hides dark secrets, as is often the case with any place that has its own rule book. Everything seems to respond to some rituals established on the basis of suggestion, starting with the movements of that perfectly harmonized rhythmic gymnastics team, inside and outside of training. The mystery of the disappearance of a girl floats in the air. In Johnny’s heart, the feeling that in this place he will do much more than transport: the night is clear when his rest is taken from him to dig a two-meter ditch.

We could speak of Johnny as the equivalent of the spectator, but in reality we know Johnny even less than we know ourselves. He himself and his intentions and his past compose a mystery to be piled up on the infinite enigmas of the community where he has gone to work. And far from frustrating, that lack of information just seducede, at least this chronicler already tired of over-explained mythologies and dialogues as if taken from a subsection of some wiki page. Fares Fares knows how to give personality to his character only based on posture and gaze: he once again leaves his mark on a series after serving in ‘Chernobyl’ as a Soviet soldier who receives orders to shoot abandoned pets.

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It would be almost criminal to continue giving details (for example, the logic of Johnny’s growing attachment to orphans) rather than allowing other viewers that pleasure of not knowing. The mission of the series, be that as it may, begins to emerge clearly from its first minutes: blur the progressive image of Sweden and reveal, or remind us, that a part of the country’s society feels more respect for the environment than for immigrants from eastern European countries.