Why are Films and Original so Different?

After breakfast, we went out. The first place we visited was one of government–run liquor shops called ‘Systemboraget’. As Sweden has an alcohol monopoly system, we cannot by any wines or liquors in normal supermarkets. We have to go to special shops run by the government. The price of liquors was considerably high and I supposed that it was because of the high tax. We bought a bottle of absinthe with 60 percent alcohol. There should have been absinthe with a frightening 80 percent alcohol, but we could not find it there, fortunately or unfortunately I do not know.

Coming out from the liquor shop, we went to a supermarket where Julia bought another kind of liquorice candies. According to Julia, these candies were not for herself but for her younger sister.

While shopping, I was thinking about the poster of a Vallander film which I happened to see in front of a cinema on my morning jog. The Kurt Vallander series by Henning Mankell are one of my favorite crime novels, but I had never had the chance to see any films adopted from the series. Even though some Vallander films had been shown in Sweden, I was sure they were not shown in Britain. I wanted to watch the film if it was going to be shown at a suitable time for me. I went to the cinema and asked for the next screening. They said that it would start in ten minutes, at one o’clock. I decided to separate from my wife and daughter to watch ‘Steget Efter’ (One Step Behind)

‘The film is in Swedish. Is that okay for you?’

I was asked at the ticket counter. I said that it would be okay because I had read the original and knew the story. Regretfully, the movie was very different from the original. Although Vallender was a hero, the story only followed the original half way and the latter half of the film could have been a completely different story. I even got a bit angry because my favorite story was modified so much. Two hours later, I walked out from the cinema with a feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction.

As I had a little more time until I was to meet Mayumi and Julia, I entered a café alongside Kungsgatan to drink a glass of beer. There I opened the German translation of ‘The Locked Room’, the eighth book of Martin Beck series.

‘Martin Beck left the room of his colleague Rön and also the police building. He started walking toward the north. Away from Kungsholmen, passing Kungsgatan, he turned at corner of Sveavegen to the north again….’

I found it was interesting that I was in the exactly the same place where the book I was reading had mentioned.

One middle-aged gentleman was sitting and reading at the next table in the café. I looked at the title of his book. The book was in English and by Nick Hornby. When he looked up from his book, I asked him,

‘Is Hornby interesting?’

‘I can hardly say all of his books are interesting, but this one is very interesting. If you have not read it yet, I will recommend it.’　he said and asked me which book I had been reading.

‘A book by Sjöwall and Valöö. This place is mentioned in this book.’

I showed him my book. He looked a bit puzzled by the situation in which a Japanese who spoke English read a book by Swedish author in German!