Soldier of Orange

Paul Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange (1977) is a prime example of everything that's right about Hollywood filmmaking. So why didn't Hollywood make it? This is a film which examines the degradation and fight for survival during World War II in Holland, alternatively seen from the Jewish, Dutch, German and British angles. While this multiplicity would make for an uneven film in the hands of a lesser director, Verhoeven crafts an balanced and engaging film that is full of solid psychological depth throughout.

Erik Lanshof (Rutger Hauer) is a middleclass Dutch compatriot welcoming the second World War, thinking that it will be a plesant diversion from the customary blaise existence that he and his friends live. However, as he and his college classmates soon realize, this diversion is not going to go quietly into the night. After spending one last contemplative night together, a picture is all that will serve as a reminder of their lives before the separation and trials of warfare. Ergo, they begin fighting the Germans, with Erik and Guus LeJeune (Jeroen Krabbé) spearheading an assault on the enemy within their borders. Their friend Bobby, however, has been blackmailed into carrying out Nazi subterfuge, with his Jewish fiance Esther's life held over his head. As such, he values one life over that of the many, sacrificing his ethics for another. Verhoeven spends much of the film assessing how and why Bobby makes this decision by contrasting this move with Erik's movements, especially since Erik has a sustained affair with Esther behind (presumedly) Bobby's back.

These conflicts problematize simple notions of good and evil, for no character in this film can lay claim to moral superiority. There are several doubles throughout the film, such as Bobby and Erik, Erik and Alex (see below), Esther and Susan (an English military assistant), and Erik and Luus. Verhoeven constantly and poetically underscores the struggles of these men, but never loses sight of the larger context of the film, as seen in the final sustained image from the film.

Alex is the friend who becomes the venomous German soldier due to his mother's treatment in Holland, eventually dances the tango with Erik, and is blown to bits by a rebel youth who he chastised with bread . That last bit seems a bit unnecessary, since the last image before that with Alex has him crawling along the mansion's floor trying to recover the medal that he's been rewarded with, suggesting that petty ornaments matter to him more so than human life. Verhoeven's last scene with Alex thus seems unnecessary, since he's already resigned to his life.

However, the scenes with Esther contrast with Verhoeven's unnecessariness with Alex. Her knowing passivity about her fiance and later husband's nefarious actions seem all the more traumatic and real given her refusal to acquiesce her life for any practicing morality, preferring instead to maintain life at any cost, though she always remains passive rather than directly responsible for any loss of life. As such, her psychology becomes to me the most interesting after Hauer's Eric, with Gus close behind her, since he's obviously willing to sacrifice his freedom for revenge at the end.

This film, along with Turkish Delight, is probably the best case for director Verhoeven and his strengths balancing art and commercialism, in that it has strong personal ties and remains aesthetically and emotionally vital at every moment.

Soldier of Orange: 9/10

Turkish Delight

Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight (1973) is a very interesting film. It is regarded by many critics as the best film to ever come from the Netherlands, presenting a blend of audacious, exaggerated comedy together with a raw, emotional force when it suddenly switches gears in the final act, revealing its former comedy as the foremost exposed layer of a battered psyche struggling to understand something intimate and personal.

For the first hour, where Eric Volk (Rutger Hauer) is perpetually consumed with sex and sex alone, the film seemingly exists only as a critique of bourgeois ideals and allows Eric to subvert these principles with his vagabond lifestyle. As a result, these scenes are understood as necessary, but seldom seem to be revealing. Eric’s inner torment finally comes about once the film returns to its beginning dream of Eric killing his former wife Olga (Monique van de Ven). It is here that Verhoeven begins to play with more intricate ideas of psychology and pathology since Olga clearly desires Eric, yet she remains faithful to her upper crust parents and so she turns on her former lover and spouse.

For his part, Eric has done much to lead Olga into this decision. His refusal to mature is simultaneously his strongest attribute and his downfall, since he never maintains a steady income and often sells only the artwork that is most inappropriate to her, making what was once a private affair public. Yet there such moments of power when the two are together, most memorably the scene where the two lie in the street amidst a torrential downpour and just relax in each other’s arms, and these moments speak of the physicality that always lingers between them.
Indeed, the latter half of the film, wherein Verhoeven details how most/all of Eric's pathologies deride from the absence of his ex-wife, lead into a tender portrayal of desire as a psychological need. The last fifteen minutes especially turn this from a dark comedy into a tale of haunting introspection, when Olga’s health is threatened and Eric finally becomes the man she has always wanted him to be. Moreover, the ending works as a powerful parallel to her father’s passing, and Verhoeven handles it all delicately and develops it beautifully.

A wonderful score and film, Turkish Delight is always vibrant and alive.

Turkish Delight: 10/10

Hana-Bi

Takashi Kitano's Hana-Bi (translated as Fireworks, 1997) takes away all the artifice of the genre action film, leaving in its wake the skeletal remains that is this film. Dialogue is never as important as the psychology of the action to Kitano, which explains his preference toward understated and nearly expressionless characters. However, Kitano also infuses his film with a grace and artistry that allows it to transcend its rigid genre status and prevail instead as an intimate character study.

Nishi (Kitano) is a cop consumed by the guilt of leaving an stake-out to see his sick wife at the hospital. His partner, however, was gunned down and paralyzed for life while he was away, an act that first is expressed in cold blooded revenge but later as an internalized disinterest with the types of morality that he was once expected to hold up. Instead, as his wife's health continues to worsen, Nishi turns to crime in an effort to give her a last few weeks of comfort and economic bliss, all while evading the mob and police.

Like his other early minimalist film A Scene at the Sea, this film's best moments occur between Nishi and his wife, when the two share an intimacy, though it is very much unspoken. There is a way in which her reaction to his rage is very much pathological in itself, since she displays no reaction to his outbursts. The juxtaposition in this film, though, is what privileges it above its kind. Whereas Nishi very much surrenders to his guilt vis-a-vis violence, his partner, now in a a wheelchair, utilizes his to new condition to turn away from his former life as a cop and now teaches himself art (all of the paintings in the film were actually painted by Kitano himself in another parallel, since this film is the direct result of Kitano trying to recover from a motorcycle accident that scarred his face and limited his ability to convey emotion through it).

As a result of this confluence between fiction and nonfiction, the commentary between art and violence as those which the two cops depended on becomes nicely woven throughout. One relies on a medium that saves and projects the regret outward, the other internalizes and becomes consumed by his guilt. The finale, which seems to suggest hues of purity and references Fellini's La Dolce Vita, ultimately becomes fatalistic as Kitano forecloses any narrative pathway for revenge to allow liberation in this film.

Hana-Bi was the film that awakened international critics to the full potential Kitano has as a filmmaker, and its power has not lessened in time. Such a good film, ripe with subtext.

Hana-Bi: 10/10