After world-premiering at the 30th Geneva International Film Festival earlier this month, Whiskey on the Rocks [+lee también:
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entrevista: Björn Stein
ficha de la serie] now opens on native soil at the 35th Stockholm International Film Festival. The six-part Swedish miniseries is a freely – and wildly – inspired account of the 1981 events surrounding a Soviet nuclear-tipped navy submarine literally hitting the south coast of Sweden, an area that also happened to be a military safety zone. The affair became a proper “international incident” that caused some unrest and also a few more or less appropriate chuckles back in its day (the expression “whiskey on the rocks” refers to the American nickname of the “whiskey” class submarine used by the Soviets, and the rock formation into which it ran aground).

The coincidence of the Swiss being the first to screen this Cold War memento involving that other conspicuously neutral European nation at the time may also amuse. Sweden had stayed out of two world wars, had steadfastly rejected a NATO membership and maintained benevolent diplomatic relations on both sides of the Berlin Wall – again, more or less. The Prime Minister at the time of this particular skirmish was one Thorbjörn Fälldin, a leisurely pipe-smoking sheep farmer of rudimentary language skills, regularly ridiculed in some political camps. Dictating the USSR was the totalitarian if hardly teetotal Comrade Brezhnev while the US chief was a former Hollywood actor named Reagan, who, to the consternation of so many, would win two terms in the White House.

All three are given meaty portrayals here, with burlesque caricature strokes and succulent servings of ham, courtesy of director Björn Stein (Midnight Sun, Shadowplay) and writers Henrik Jansson-Schweizer and Jonas Jonasson (The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared [+lee también:
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ficha de la película]). Some inspiration may come from the likes of Dr Strangelove, The Death of Stalin [+lee también:
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The Berlin Wall is now long gone, Brezhnev is being voted the most popular Soviet leader, Reagan is being seen as a most balanced and pragmatic POTUS and Sweden has joined NATO. In view of its time of release, Whiskey on the Rocks provides food for serious reflection amidst all the silliness. "The same but different" could be a suitable, if quite uncanny, choice of expression.

Whiskey on the Rocks was produced by Skyverse Nordic with co-production by SVT and Disney+.