“I used to be a Christian. Then I became a forensic pathologist,” says Nyberg (Richard McCabe) in “Before the Frost,” the last episode of the third season of Wallander.
It’s hard to blame him. At the time he delivers the line, he is examining the corpse of a woman who has been deliberately burned to death. Nine episodes in, we in the audience have learned that that’s more or less par for the course. Carefully photographed to give just enough assistance to our imaginations, Wallander has no shortage of grisly murders, but for me at least, the adjective that lingers in the mind is “bleak.” For most of the characters, this is just the way the world is. The only sensible thing to do is to contain it, to isolate yourself from it as much as possible.
And yet, Wallander himself (a superb Kenneth Branagh) seems incapable of such isolation. His empathy for the victims he encounters plays into one of the oldest cliches in detective fiction: the cop who’s great at his job but a mess in his personal life. Here, that cliche is earned. We sympathize with the daughter who cannot rely on him to keep an appointment, and with the girlfriend who hopes that a loving home life will provide an antidote, make it possible for him not to bring his work home with him. After all, surely he doesn’t need all that empathy to solve the case; in fact, too much of it may get in the way.
On a practical level, this is a very tempting point of view, containing a great deal of truth. And certainly, I would be the last person to argue against the inclusion of high-functioning sociopaths in the canon of detective fiction.
But do we love Wallander in spite of his empathy, or because of it?
Good Friday is a fact. Nyberg doesn’t deny it - he has simply asked what is “good” about it. That’s a fair question, and one to which it is not enough to answer, “the Resurrection.” Not only would Nyberg reject such an answer, but giving it in such a simplistic way offers a future answer to a present problem. It’s akin to saying that when Wallander solves the case, that will “solve” the victims’ suffering. It won’t, because nothing can. Wallander’s compassion isn’t useful in solving the case, but compassion is not intrinsically useful: its role is to “suffer with.” It acknowledges the other person as a person - not simply as the locus of a problem to be solved.
Even to the Christian, suffering is a mystery. Yes, we have been told that there is an answer, and that we will receive it: that is the promise of the Resurrection. But if we move too quickly from Good Friday to Easter, we risk losing that moment of acknowledgement, the responsibility to be present with the other person here and now. Did Mary Magdalen stand beside the cross because she understood that it was the pathway to eternal life? Or did she stand there because it was where Christ was?
Wallander sees Good Friday in every case. He wouldn’t use such a term, of course. Like Nyberg, he has lost (if he ever had) that frame of reference. Compassion and hope are not virtues for him, but somehow he still clings to them as instincts.
That’s a horribly painful way to live, and the show is certainly not easy viewing. Which, paradoxically, is its great gift. I do not want it to be easy. I love Wallander because of those apparently-useless instincts that constantly threaten to ruin his life. And in asking us to love him, Wallander (whether intentionally or not) hints that those instincts might have meaning, after all. We are made in the image of a God who died, and, if we are to answer Nyberg, we must imitate Him before we can speak of the God who lives.
