Review: Total Recall (dir. Len Wiseman)

Story: In a dystopian future the working classes are oppressed and forced to live in Australia. Factory worker Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) is dissatisfied with his life and goes to the shady ‘Recall’ company to have memories of a more exciting ‘secret agent life’ implanted. However, something goes wrong in the process and Quaid finds himself on the run, chased by his government-employed wife (Kate Beckinsale) and capable of some proper combat. All he now needs to do is to find out what, and who, he really is.

Let us first of all remark how different this Total Recall is from the 1990 Paul Verhoeven film of the same title, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone. Unlike the first adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” this new film is no tongue-in-cheek satire. It is a very serious, very straightforward action sci-fi flick, which only one second thought serves as a commentary on modern society. This gives relevance and legitimacy to the film. A simple copy-with-younger-faces-and-better-CGI-effects would not have added anything new.

However we must note at the same time how few new things we see and hear. It is curious how a film about false memories can be such a deja-vu trip. The world of Len Wiseman’s Total Recall seems built out of leftovers from the sets of other Philip K. Dick adaptations: The Colony (Australia) is basically Blade Runner’s futuristic LA. And the more up-scale United Federation of Britain is a multi-storey version of Washington DC in Minority Report. Furthermore there are flashbacks to I, Robot, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (armies of synthetic soldiers) and The Matrix (plugged in brains, close hand-to-hand combat).

Certain plot points also reminded me of The Matrix as well. But it is not fair to criticize the film on this account, because Philip K. Dick’s original short story predates the Wachowski movie(1999) by 33 years. Nonetheless, as earlier in the year with John Carter, we can acknowledge that the source material might have been original, but that we – nowadays – have already seen it done in film before. Many times. And better.

All of which does not mean that this Total Recall is a bad film. It is a perfectly acceptable Friday night’s piece of entertainment. It has spectacular action sequences and likeable actors. I always enjoy watching Colin Farrell, and he is definitely a more appropriate Douglas Quaid than the Governator ever was. Kate Beckinsale is nice and feisty as the not-so-loving wife of Quaid, Bryan Cranston is a proper bad guy and Bill Nighy elevates any film with his presence. Only Jessica Biel is slightly short-changed as mystery woman Melina.

Final verdict: I had brought my 3D glasses to the cinema, as I was somehow convinced that this was a 3D film. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not. However, it is perhaps slightly worrying that this is what I will remember best of Total Recall. And that was not a problem that ever haunted Verhoeven’s campy, ultra-violent satire.

So Much Potential, So Little Result – the De Bende van Oss review

This film starts quite good, with a 1945 set prologue at the Ministry of Justice. The new Secretary is surprised by three piles of files on his desk. They are about ‘some situation’ in Oss (a town in the Dutch province of North-Brabant), in the 1930s, about the involvement of the armed police and about corruption at a national level. “What do you want to do with it?” asks an assistant to the Secretary. “Let’s just throw it all away” is the response.

Now this scene sets the tone for a cruel farce of a gangster film. A typically Dutch twist of the likes of Goodfellas and Mean Streets. And the following scene, which introduces the city of Oss and its inhabitants in the 1930s by means of a wry, ironic voice-over by protagonist Johanna “the slut” (Sylvia Hoeks), follows on that path. We meet the gangster boss, the corrupt local cop, the abusive industrialist and the pedophile priest. The scene is underscored by a soundtrack that feels remarkably ‘American’, as it invokes memories of Hans Zimmer’s work for Inception. I think the group Het Paleis van Boem righteously won the Golden Calf at the Dutch Film Festival last week.

Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there. De Bende van Oss (“The Gang of Oss”) follows a few months in the life of Johanna, a meat packer and waitress whose husband returns from prison. Despite all good intentions to stay on the right path, the both of them are soon drawn back into a world of alcoholism, abuse, crime, corruption and murder. And by God, is Johanna spared nothing? The film is first of all completely unbelievable in the amount of suffering that this character is forced to suffer. She is prostituted by her husband, beaten up, getting pregnant, witnessing a murder, caring for her mentally handicapped sister and in love with two other men…

Instead of a being an enjoyable, slightly farcical gangster film, De Bende van Oss turns into a period-set soap opera that just won’t end. Much like Zwartboek – the Paul Verhoeven film with which De Bende van Oss seems to share some DNA – the film is way too long. And boring. In fact, it’s only 110 minutes long, but never feels like it. During yet another violent or abusive confrontation with gangster boss Wim de Kuyper (Marcel Musters) one feels one’s bum turning numb. One watches one’s watch and thinks: that Justice Secretary sure made the right choice when he threw this entire Oss-shit in the bin.

On the plus side: the film looks gorgeous. And it’s remarkably well understandable for a Dutch film (films that have a reputation of having un-understandable dialogues) done in a local accent (although there are a few moments where some subtitles would have helped). And sure it is a good thing to have Dutch films set not only in the cities in the West of the country. To throw in some regionally motivated banter against everything that is protestant and ‘Hollands’ is forgivable. And yes, the cast is phenomenal.

However, what is the point in assembling all this acting talent, in throwing on-screen every famous Dutch face that can do the accent (more or less), if you give the likes of Hoeks, Musters, Frank Lammers, Maria Kraakman, Pierre Bokma and Theo Maassen one-dimensional characters with wooden dialogues to spit out and boring gratuitous sex scenes to act out? Only former soap actor Daan Schuurmans, as the commander of the military police, feels natural and in his place.

De Bende van Oss could have been one of the best Dutch films of the last years, with the source material at hand, the talent involved and the budget it can boast. Yet in the hands of director André van Duren and producer Matthijs van Heijningen it has become a complete misfire. Van Heijningen’s displeasure with the Dutch Film Festival and the lack of prizes his film won is therefore a complete joke.

The Best and the Worst of Dutch Cinema – the Tirza review

Dutch cinema has been the subject of heavy criticism by Dutch audiences and critics during its history. During the 1930s Dutch films were criticized for being clumsy, conservative and old-fashioned, and critics believed there was no such thing as a Dutch film culture. The incidental success at the box office had more to do with the novelty of the sound film than with the quality of the films.

When a film culture emerged in the 1970s, with a steady output of feature films that dealt with contemporary subjects, the criticism was that the films showed little taste. Sex, violence and bad language were part of the early work of Paul Verhoeven, Wim Verstappen and their contemporaries. And after the excitement of the first of these ‘naughty’ films Dutch audiences lost their appetite for Dutch films. The absolute low was in 1994, when less than 1% of tickets sold in cinemas was for Dutch features.  Audiences were fed up with the sex, the nudity, with always the same actors, and all the rude language. Nonetheless, those were still part of Dutch feature films, the makers of whom had lost complete contact with their audiences.

Things have improved over the last ten years. Next to the old-fashioned artistic films Dutch filmmakers also produce good children’s films, popular spectacles and simple comedies. But the ‘respectable’ film, the festival darling, still has this old stigma. Tirza, directed by Rudolf van den Berg who adapted Arnon Grunberg’s book of the same title to a screenplay, showcases both the worst elements of Dutch cinema, as well as its greatest assets.

Tirza tells the story of Jorgen Hofmeester, a literary agent forced into early retirement because there is no need for intellectuals anymore at his agency. He is divorced, and estranged from his eldest daughter. When his younger daughter Tirza disappears on a holiday with her Moroccan boyfriend to Namibia, Jorgen goes to Africa to find her.

Great about Tirza is first and foremost the acting. Gijs Scholten van Aschat is magnificently ugly and disengaging as Jorgen. You want to feel for him, but his own behavior makes it impossible. He is not just a Western stranger in Africa; he embodies all the mediocrities of the white middle class. Faced with a sick African woman the only thing he can think of is to throw money at her (literally!).

Good are also the supporting actors, especially Johanna ter Steege as Jorgens bitchy ex-wife. It is a pity her role is diminished to a few telephone calls in the second half of the film. Sylvia Hoeks is easily lovable as the titular daughter, and Keitumetse Katlabo is wonderful as the young child prostitute who forces herself onto Jorgen in Namibia. The cinematography by Gabor Szabo is magnificent, especially once Jorgen sets out into the wilderness of Namibia.

Acting and cinematography have always been good in Dutch cinema. Actors are drawn from the strong theatre academies, but in such a small country the risk is to see the same (nice and young) faces again and again on screen. It is therefore good that the lead actors in Tirza are older actors of name and reputation. Cinematography, especially landscapes, has been a Dutch strength since the master painters of the Golden Age, but has translated well to cinema, for instance in Fanfare (Haanstra, 1958) and De Poolse Bruid (Traidia, 1998). Tirza is a worthy addition to this list.

But the worst of Dutch cinema is there as well, and it will continue to estrange the larger audience from the film. There is the graphic depiction of sex, which is always thematized as problematic, never just nice or normal. There is a lot of verbal abuse in Jorgen’s increasingly incoherent monologues, inherited no doubt from Grunberg, and there is ridiculous violence. However, the violence actually works this time, as it is the final push we need to disengage from and lose our sympathy for Jorgen.

In the end though, Tirza works. Because of the acting, because it looks great, and because of a great twist in the third act that draws your breath away. I haven’t seen the other ‘Gouden Kalf’ award nominees from the Dutch Film Festival, but if Tirza was not one of them, they must be really, really good (or the jury must have been really wrong).

Shiny Shiny Little Toy – the The American review

The most remarkable thing about The American is how much it resembles In Bruges. Anton Corbijn’s second feature, after 2007’s Control, tells the story of an American hitman, hiding out in an old town on continental Europe after killing an innocent person on a job gone wrong. Martin McDonagh’s second feature, from 2008, told the story of two Irish hitman hiding out in an old town on continental Europe after killing an innocent person on a job gone wrong.

The resemblances are more than superficial. Both films dwell in Catholic imagery. Both show the old town as both heaven and hell, visually as well as thematically, and settle in the end for purgatory. The protagonists have to find redemption; have to atone for their sins and by doing so find new purpose in life.

But where In Bruges was a pitch black comedy, with lots of laugh-out-loud funny moments emphasizing the bizarreness and tragedy of the plot, The American is dead serious. And very shallow. Actually, it seems as if Corbijn, with his “difficult second album”, has been too easy on himself.

For the first hour, the film marvels at its own beauty. Corbijn acts like a first year Film School student, who has just been given the camera for the first time. ‘Look’, he says, ‘look how beautiful I can frame this mountain, or this train. Look how George Clooney’s old hitman Jack goes through the tunnel, towards the light.’

‘Look, how much I know about film history, how I refer to spaghetti Westerns.’ In case we hadn’t noticed that a silent stranger came to a quiet town, Corbijn thinks it is necessary to have a television in the village café play Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, and have the café owner tell us that it is a Leone film, and that Leone was an Italian. Filmmaking for Dummies, might have been an alternative title for the screenplay based on Rowan Joffe’s novel A Very Private Gentleman.

Corbijn also acts out an almost pornographic sensibility when it comes to framing the young women in his film. He seems to be unable not to continuously linger on the ladies’ behinds, like a horny teenager. He also has Violante Placido have an orgasm on film that really need not be there. Perhaps Corbijn is aspiring to be the successor of Paul Verhoeven as a dirty old Dutch director.

Does all this mean that there is nothing to be enjoyed about The American? Of course not. Clooney plays very restricted and minimal, but is outshone by Placido as the prostitute that becomes his love interest. Paolo Bonacelli is lovely as the realistic priest who, literally, takes his lambs to the slaughterhouse. For the Dutch public there is a nice little supporting role for Thekla Reuten, with three different haircuts. Reuten also had a nice little supporting role in In Bruges by the way.

And give credit where it is due: Corbijn, together with cinematographer Martin Ruhe, makes the Ambruzzo region in Italy look gorgeous. And once we’re passed the one hour mark, when the plot seems to find its pull and stuff starts happening, and the inevitable ending becomes clear, The American almost develops the dramatic depth of a Greek tragedy. But by then, it is already too late for redemption.

Memories from the Dutch Film Festival – part I

Wednesday, the 22nd of September that is, the Dutch Film Festival will kick off in Utrecht. This film festival is not by far the most important of festivals, especially not for the international crowd, but it holds a special place in my heart. Unlike the Rotterdam Film Festival, the atmosphere of which is suffused by the foul smell of self-importance, the Utrecht festival has a slightly hypocritical modesty about it that it cherishes. It’s Oscars in the polder. Everyone knows it, but we still enjoy it.

There’s an opening film, and a closing film, and the awards ceremony at which the Golden Calfs are handed out for best new Dutch productions. There are special guests, and VIPs and there is even a daily talkshow for Dutch public television, recorded in a huge white tent erected in the middle of the centre of Utrecht, on Neude square. Considering how small Utrecht is, and how small the Dutch film industry is, there is a disproportionate amount of gossip and backchat. There are even ‘scandals’, when this or that actor or director feels mistreated by the awards jury. The greatest thing about the festival is that it lasts for ten days, while there are never enough new Dutch releases to fill ten days of festival. So each year there are ‘review programmes’ of classic – or simply old – Dutch films.

Traditionally, each year film producers, or film exhibitors, or film journalists, or film directors let out a cry for help for a threatened film industry in the margins. Dutch film has gotten too artistic, or too popular. We’ve lost touch with the international trends, or films are not Dutch anymore. The government should give more subsidies, and the money available is given to the wrong films by subsidy board members who allegedly know nothing at all about film. Last year it was all about the Oscars, as the producers of Wit Licht and Oorlogswinter threw mud at each other for competing for the coveted Dutch proposal for the Academy Award for non-English cinema.

The most important and fun thing about the Dutch Film Festival however are the volunteers. Most of them are college students from the film, television, theater and communication studies departments. In return for free admission to any film, they spend two busy weeks selling and checking tickets, selling drinks, interviewing audiences, handing out programmes, driving celebrities to premieres, and adding to the festival an atmosphere of relentless optimism and happiness.

During the festival I will dedicate some of my blog posts to the Dutch Film Festival. And as I am am unable to be present this year, I will draw on beautiful memories from the past. First of all, a screening of Paul Verhoeven’s Zwartboek (Black Book), which opened on the Dutch Film Festival in 2006.  Verhoeven’s long awaited return to Dutch cinema was so long, and so boring, that by the time protagonist Carice van Houten screams at the mirror “Will it never stop!” the audience in the screening responded unanimously: “Will this film NEVER stop?”