We saw the Norwegian movie Headhunters at the Rasmussen Rotunda, Wheelock Student Center at the University of Puget Sound on Monday, February 8, 2016. My wife heard about it from an email from South Sound Magazine. It was part of the Sister Cities International Film Festival. They showed a film from each of Tacoma's sister cities. On February 8 it was Ålesund, Norway's turn. The program started at 6 pm. We parked in the lot near the Wheelock student center along Alder that had spaces for visitors. We arrived early to have dinner at the UPS cafeteria. They now had flatscreen TV's mounted above the food stations indicating what was being served and how much each item cost. They were very reasonably priced. We noticed that they had a grand piano between the information desk and the lounge. Someone who looked young enough to be a student asked about our Norway hats. He didn't know about the event or about Headhunters or Jo Nesbø whose book is the basis for this movie.
At 6 pm we entered the Rassmussen Rotunda. They had chairs set up facing a screen. They had tables with literature about Sister Cities and other related programs. They had an old copy of Nordic Kulture and recent back issues of the Norwegian American Weekly. On a table to the left they had their silent auction set up. It included several gift baskets, mostly with wine and desserts. One of them had a DVD movie of Hawaii, Oslo. We bid on one of the items, a mug from Norway with some yellow roses. The program began with Norwegian bingo. The emcee said the Norwegian words for many things that we had to draw on our bingo sheets. Luckily my wife had brought a Norwegian dictionary. The words were fairly straightforward such as hat, window, coffee cup, horse, woman, man, telephone, door, jacket, umbrella, hand, foot, cow, and eye. Once we had drawn in everything, the emcee announced eight or nine words to mark off the bingo sheets. Three or four people got bingo and were given bags of prizes.
After Norwegian Bingo, Tacoma city councilman Robert Thoms spoke welcoming us to the event. I think he was the one who mentioned that the Sister Cities program was started by President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950's. The program said that Ålesund had been Tacoma's sister city since 1986. After Thom's speech, the emcee introduced Tora Hedges, a senior at Pacific Lutheran University from Norway. She first sang "Spring" by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. She sang it beautifully. I think between this song and the next, the emcee mentioned that Tora had sung for the King of Norway when he came to PLU graduation ceremonies in the May 2015. Tora said she would sing the next song in Swedish. It was by Sibelius and I think it was called "Little Lassie." After that song Tora said we could join in singing the next song. It was the Norwegian National Anthem that she again sang beautifully. We all stood up.
The next speaker was Tom Heavey, the founder of the Greater Tacoma Peace Prize Committee. The Committee was calling for nominations of individuals with a tie to Pierce County who have greatly helped work for peace. The prize would be awarded in April and would include a glass bowl made by Hilltop Artists and a trip for two to Oslo, Norway to watch the award of the Nobel Peace Prize. Heavey mentioned some past recipients of the Great Tacoma Peace Prize: George F. Russell; a pastor in Salishan; UPS alum David Corner who gathered cast-off medical supplies to donate to clinics in third world countries; Sally Shaw from United for Peace of Pierce County; Thomas Dixon for helping to bring together the black and white communities; and Father Bill Bichsel, the "Patron Saint of Tacoma."
At about 6:57 pm the lights went out for the movie. It was projected onto a screen on the north side of the Rotunda. They hadn't closed all the shades and we could sometimes see car headlights but overall the venue was pretty good for watching a movie. The seats were over half full, mostly with people who looked older than us. I think just before the movie started a still screen said it was rated PG-13. But fairly quickly into the movie was some clearly R-rated content. I thought that maybe it was rated PG-13 in Norway. The movie ad on the back of my Headhunters book said it was rated R. The beginning introduces the main character, corporate headhunter Roger Brown, his wife Diana, shady partner Ove Kjikerud, and Clas Greve who seems to be the perfect candidate for a corporate position. Roger has his hidden agendas. What he comes to learn the hard way is that others also have them. Though he thinks he has everything under control, his position is quite precarious from the beginning. As the story progresses it gets more out of control. It is reminiscent of the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino, and very much a Jo Nesbø story.
We thought Roger Brown was perfectly cast with Aksel Hennie. He is shorter than the average Norwegian at 168 cm (5'6") and looks it, especially with his wife Diana played by Synnøve Macudy Lund and Clas Greve played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. We remembered that Coster-Waldau was mentioned in the 2015 issue of Nordic Kulture magazine. The actors playing minor characters also do great jobs establishing their characters, sometimes in just a few minutes. The story doesn't take itself too seriously and has a lot of humor. It is fast-paced and sometimes hard to follow, but I had a general sense of what was going on. It has quite a bit of violence, blood, and some gore. At least one scene is truly disgusting but still an important part of the complex story. A character who worked for Kripos reminded me of the Harry Hole books. Roger wore some Outdoor Research apparel.
The movie is 100 minutes long and I felt like that much time had elapsed. Though the ending was somewhat unexpected, we still found it satisfying. After they turned on the lights they announced the winners of the silent auction. We won the Norwegian mug filled with yellow roses for a bid of $9. I saw the coordinator of the Classics Book Club there. We talked a bit about the upcoming discussion of The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton that was scheduled for two days later on Wednesday, February 10. I later learned that Headhunters was the highest grossing Norwegian film to date.
After seeing the movie I decided to read the book Headhunters by Jo Nesbø. My wife had bought it for me sometime during the past couple of years. It was first published in 2008 and I think it was one of Nesbø's first non-Harry Hole books other than the children's books he has written. It's a fairly short book at 265 pages. My paperback copy included the first 10-20 pages of The Snowman at the end. The original title is Hodejegerne and it was translated into British English by Dan Bartlett. The book does flesh out many details that the movie did not have time to include. Among these is that the title has multiple meanings and Roger is not the only headhunter in the story. Just like the movie, the book begins with Roger interviewing a potential candidate. Roger tells the story as the first-person narrator. The story overall is the same as the movie, but a number of plot points differ such as how a character learned of something. I felt like I understood the story much better after reading the book.
The book gives more exact details than the movie and gives more of Roger's backstory. It the first scene, the candidate Jeremias Lander is dressed "in Gunnar Øye attire: grey Ermenegildo suit, hand sewn Borelli shirt, …" (p. 5) It's interesting that Roger himself wears an Ermenegildo suit in the last scene of the book. Roger notes that the candidate is "approximately 14 centimeters taller than me and three years older. 38 then." (p. 6) Roger first meets Diana in England where his father worked as a chauffeur for the Norwegian embassy. He describes how Diana "had worn a blue-and-white striped scarf and screamed herself hoarse at Loftus Road as her poor little team, Queens Park Rangers, were being thumped by their big brother, Arsenal." (p. 25) I had never heard of the London football team Queens Park Rangers (QPR). I thought the four London teams were Arsenal, Chelsea, Westham, and Tottingham Hotspur. Well, it turns out those are the four teams in the English Premier league, but there are other lower-tier leagues. QPR are in the next league down, the Champions League.
At the beginning Roger says a lot about employment interviews. He quotes the research that says "78% of first impressions at interviews are based on body language and a mere 8% on what you actually say." (p. 12) Roger's interview technique is based on "Inbrau, Reid, and Buckley's Interrogations and Confessions from 1962 (that) laid the groundwork for what have since become the prevailing interview technique." (p. 54) Roger's observations can be very humorous. He describes how in addition to wealthy potential buyers of art, Diana also invites to a private gallery opening "the flock of young, so called promising, and allegedly poor, rebellious artists (jeans with holes, T-shirts with slogans) whom in my mind I termed QPR. When at the beginning I had wrinkled my nose at these elements on the guest list, Diana had argued that we needed 'some spice,' some life." (p. 35) When he tries to call Greve he instead reaches Greve's answerphone. He notices that Greve starts calling him by his "Christian name," Roger. At the end he sees a man stroll "out of the office building heading into a vague direction of the Passat. He had a Passat-owner gait, I determined." (p. 259) I wonder if I had that gait when I owned a Passat.
The book contained one word I did not know and a new meaning of a common word. Roger has "an ineluctable realization." (p. 109) Ineluctable means incapable of being evaded or escaped. The only thing of value that Roger has inherited from his father is "one of those wooden-ball mats, the type that taxi drivers use the whole world over." His father had used it because of piles, and "I did so too as a precaution in case it was hereditary." (p. 120) I had never heard of an affliction called piles. I turns out that piles is another word for hemorrhoids.
The book contains several relatable references. While walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood, Roger casts his eyes "down on meeting the Filipina girls who push prams for the ruling class in their suburb." (p. 49) On character owns a lithograph by Edvard Munch entitled "The Brooch." This is an actual lithograph by Munch whose most famous painting is "The Scream." There was an exhibit of other works by Munch at the Tacoma Art Museum between April and July 2016. While riding the Oslo commuter train for the first time in many years, Roger notices that "The noise from the rails was less deafening, the advertising more deafening and extrovert." (p. 209) This just reminds me of the book about introverts by Susan Crane that I read a couple of years ago. Roger reads that a painting has been sold at auction to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. We wondered if Nesbø meant the Getty or the Getty Villa.
Like most Nesbø books, Headhunters contains many fun musical references, both direct and indirect. An artist whose work Diana's gallery displays is Atle Nørum who has the same last name as John Norum, the guitarist of the Swedish rock band Europe. Diana's mobile phone ringtone is the guitar chord "G11sus4, the opening chord of The Beatles 'A Hard Day's Night.'" (p. 39) The book also has a chapter with the title "G11sus4." When Roger is put on hold by the Oslo telephone switchboard he listens "to a surprisingly good pan-pipe version of 'Wonderwall.'" (p. 198) The best musical reference is a seemingly indirect one. Roger mentions that "My father, Ian Brown, was a keen, though not a very good, chess player." (p. 93) I'm pretty sure it's not a coincidence that Ian Brown is also the name of the lead singer of The Stone Roses. Nesbø mentioned The Stone Roses in one of the Harry Hole books.
Headhunters made for a satisfying movie and an even more satisfying book. Knowing the outcome of the story did not detract much if at all from reading the book. Maybe filmmakers will make more movies out of Nesbø's books.