Moksha World

Mhz Choice is an excellent streaming platform if, like me, you are fond of European mystery series. I’ve seen many that I enjoyed but I found this series from Norway to be particularly interesting. Murder mysteries often focus on the “who-done-it” aspect of the story and it is fascinating to follow the episodes to the end for the final reveal. In this series, Aksel Nilsen was legally acquitted of murder but remains guilty in the minds of everyone in his town. He returns to his hometown in Norway after 20 years of living in Malaysia only to find that he still remains guilty in the minds of the people in town; particularly in the mind of the mother of the young woman whom he allegedly murdered. But is he guilty?

Solving cold cases, particularly cases that happened before the introduction of DNA evidence, isn’t a new concept in the crime drama genre. This series has aspects of being a cold case drama but the main storyline is the unraveling of the numerous lies told at the time of original investigation and also in the attempt to re-open the investigation 20 years later. I had been watching an Indian drama in which the mother of the family threatens to set herself on fire if her children don’t do what she wants. This is a rather dramatic and obvious manipulation (unfortunately not to her children) and I had been thinking a lot about how nobody ever called her out on it – but this is for a separate post! The Norwegian technique utilized in this series is much more subtle, yet just as powerful and effective. The mother varies her strategy for each of her targets: mayor, police chief, son, husband and anyone else that she believes can help her finally prove that Aksel Nilsen killed her daughter and should go to prison. She is at times vulnerable and desperate to heal the pain of losing her daughter. At other times she ruthlessly takes advantage of the vulnerabilities of anyone who challenges her conclusions about who murdered her daughter. 

I felt frustrated to watch the various characters get manipulated over and over again. I realized that many of the characters had been subjected to this woman’s manipulation for so many years that they probably didn’t even realize it was happening. How does one finally break out of this pattern? In many cases we don’t figure it out until it’s too late. Perhaps the manipulations we see on television are often melodramatic and seem too unrealistic to be taken seriously. If we started to see the connections between TV drama and reaIity, even just conceptually, we would be better equipped to resist manipulation. I’ve always wanted to believe that human beings make rational, thoughtful decisions, yet many times it seems to be based solely on what we feel or want to be true – which isn’t always very rational. If we don’t apply our rational capacity as human beings to situations in our life, is it fair to blame only the person who manipulated us? Don’t we then share some of the blame? Do we take enough time to evaluate someone’s motives before deciding that we believe them? Has that person earned enough trust to believe in them? Or do we continue to blindly follow anyone that says what we want to believe?

Manipulation is a commonly used technique by salespeople, family members, partners, politicians, among others, both in life and television. How manipulation was portrayed here was unusual in how connected it was to the plot. The pace of the series is a bit slow but the cliffhangers connected the episodes effectively. The scenery is stunningly beautiful and the acting was superb. I have seen the actor who played Aksel Nilsen’s brother, Tobias Santelmann, in several other shows – my favorite being Borderliner on Netflix. 

CNN recently aired an interesting special for the Fareed Zakaria GPS show called How to Lead. As I watched it I started to think about Acquitted again. What if the characters in the series had watched this special and thought about the motives of the leaders in their community? Were they actually worthy of being considered leaders? I recommend watching the special if you get a chance and apply the criteria they discuss to whomever you see as a leader – and also to yourself!