Countries & Movies: Netherlands
Cinema of the Netherlands is presented in the FilmGourmand's Golden Thousand by two films: “Achtste Groepers Huilen Niet (Cool Kids Don't Cry)” by Dennis Bots (2012) and "Zwartboek (Black Book)" by Paul Verhoeven (2006). Today, our post is dedicated to the Paul Verhoeven's movie "Black Book".
The premiere of the film "Black Book" took place on September 1, 2006 at the Venice International Film Festival, at which the film was nominated for the main award - the Golden Lion. Totally the film obtained 13 film awards and 23 nominations. As for the awards, they were mainly “domestic” awards received at Netherlands' little-known film festivals. But among the nominations there were two very honorable and prestigious ones. One of them is the nomination for the British BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Film. The second - for the Golden Lion Prize of the Venice Film Festival.
As for the BAFTA, "Black Book" has lost this Award to a more than worthy rival - the Mexican film "El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)". Here, as they say, everything is extremely clear and fair. But as for the Golden Lion, jury of the film festival, chaired by Catherine Deneuve, decided to give it to the Chinese film "San xia hao ren (Still Life)". By the way, that year our wonderful actress Chulpan Khamatova was also a member of this jury. Honestly, I have not seen this Chinese film, and therefore I can’t judge why it "caught" the jury of the Venice Film Festival. The audience’s ratings of this film are rather modest, and the prizes of prestigious film festivals, except for the Golden Lion, are also absent.
Although, perhaps, not so much the Chinese film “hooked” the jury of the Venice Film Festival, how much the ambiguity of the film by Paul Verhoeven was embarrassed. The most capacious of this ambiguity of the film was described by the Russian film critic Valery Kichin in his review entitled "Courtesan in the rear." In 2007 review Kichin wrote: "before us is a famously constructed adventure of the new Mata Hari in the rear of the Gestapo, a charming Stirlitz in a skirt with a slit, and of Jewish nationality and therefore risking a hundred times more. The plot is put together very skillfully, it has a lot of deceptions and multi-pass combinations, when the heroine from a hit singer can instantly turn into a brave warrior, from a stoned pariah - into a folk heroine, from a courtesan - into a partisan and, in the final, into a "rural teacher" with the wise look of a people's Deputy of Parliament." At the same time, the film "without a clearly formulated author's "message". It's about everything at once: a little about the war, a little about sex, a little about the Holocaust, a little about beautiful women, and in General - about what all people are, in fact, shifters, fools and bitches."
In addition, many critics, for example, Dennis Lim (The New York Times) noted the design in which "(relatively) good German turns out to be the film’s most sympathetic male figure, the resistance is exposed as a hotbed of traitorous mercenaries". Dennis Lim quotes Paul Verhoeven in his same review: "despite its pervasive cynicism, “Black Book” is a full-throttle adventure without the somber piety that has become a default mode for World War II movies.... “For me the war was more a spectacle than a real threat,” said Mr. Verhoeven, who was born in 1938 (and whose family was not Jewish). “It was like big special effects in the sky, hundreds of planes passing by and rockets shooting over our house. A lot of my memories are from the point of view of a child who was not really fearing for his life.”»- Dennis Lim, The New York Times, Jan. 7, 2007. As one of our good films says, this explains a lot. Moreover, not only with regard to a particular film, but also in a broader sense - why modern Europeans categorically do not understand what threat the Red Army saved them from in 1945.
Perhaps because of the ambiguity described above, the film was not included in the Oscar nominees, although it was nominated by the Netherlands. And the jury of the Venice Film Festival did find a way out of the delicate situation (after all, the "Black Book" was made talentedly and leaving it without awards would not be entirely right). The jury of the Venice Film Festival awarded the "Black Book" with the prize as the best international film, but in the Young Cinema section. There is a clear irony: the director of the film, Paul Verhoeven, turned 68 that year, and the author of the script - 70. The most suitable age for Young Cinema.
The film by Paul Verhoeven has become the most expensive and most commercially successful film in the history of Netherlands' cinema. With a budget of $ 21 million, the film raised nearly $ 27 million.
As for the assessment of the controversial film by Paul Verhoeven by ordinary moviegoers, 66% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film ratings of 8 or higher.
Based on the success indicators listed above, according to the version of FilmGourmand, "Black Book" has a rating of 7.895 and takes 856th Rank in the Golden Thousand.
