An average movie

Even though Jos Stelling is one of the most highly regarded directors from the Netherlands, I have to admit that I’m not really familiar with his work. Indeed, I have seen only his previous directorial effort, ‘Het Meisje en de Dood’ which did win the Golden Calf for the best Dutch film of the year but, to be honest, I didn’t care much for it. Well, even though the rest of the film club was really enthusiast, I have to admit that I had a hard time to really connect with this (probably) last movie from the Dutch master. I mean, I have to admit that it was visually really neat and definitely from another level than your average Dutch production, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, the movie itself was just too cryptic for my taste and I would have a really hard time to tell what Stelling was trying to tell or to achieve here. Another thing that bothered me was the gimmick of the mute main character. In my opinion, it is a rather cheap trick to make your character deep and mysterious by having him saying nothing but he felt more like an empty shell than an actual human-being. Above all, I don’t think he was really interesting and this Russian woman who he met half way through was actually much more intriguing. The other tricky thing with this movie was that it was so random and it’s as if Stelling created his own logic as he went along and, like the rest of the movie, I guess it is really a matter of taste if you’re going to appreciate this approach. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really work for me, I gave it a few extra points for being so artistic and challenging and I still think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.