Zwartboek

Catch Her If You Can

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Dutch director Paul Verhoeven has an immense body of work to his credit, a career massively characterized by a strong attraction to sci-fi and female flesh, not necessarily the worst combination one could build a filmography on.

Though Verhoeven has a significant early period encompassed via the eight films he created prior to his international breakthrough delivery RoboCop by 1987, this here mentioned title is the one to focus broad attention on Verhoeven, and establish him as primal sci-fi and flesh-related storyteller in the consecutive years. Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers. Remember Sharon Stone offering you a glimpse of what you would never consider as something to steal a glimpse at? Well, I admit I always found that particular scene an effect craver and choose instead to scrutinize Stone's legs. I am not too keen to look at what I am anticipated to. Also, funny how that little 1992 gesture have founded Stone's career, no?

Just to thread a little bit further along this path: if you want to see an enigmatically bad, cite that I, herein: baaaad movie, be sure to check out Basic Instinct 2, in which Sharon Stone is ... khm... still .. khm... 34 years old or at least struggles to be, has her amazingly dim male sidekick so Sharon can even speak to someone in Femme Fatale register, and she even acts highly seductively. If you think all this sounds quite little to fill in a feature film length then I would say that you are grasping at a defendable concept quite promisingly.

Back to Verhoeven though, who of course has nothing to do with Basic Instinct 2. Exquisite streaks of little, pleasant visual and fictional vibes this director offered and implemented in his works to date, giving us moments we have no chance nor reason to forget, instead we regard them as timeless classics. Like: "See you at the Party, Richter!"

Verhoeven now gives you a World War II drama, based on true events, and offers all this via the utilization of both stable conspiracy mechanics and Carice van Houten, a Dutch actress who is not just blatantly beautiful but is a great practitioner of her craft, as well. Now it is time to see how Zwartboek works. Here is how: Holland, Nazi Occupation. Jewish beauty Rachel Stein has to be one of the enemy to blow pepper under the hideous nose of the rampant Nazi ideology.

Verhoeven's latest delivery weights in and feels out as an extremely integral TV show. This is not a blame factor of course, as TV is getting better and better to the point where you can say that certain TV attractions are way more polished and stable than certain feature films are. Such qualities that are welcomely reminiscent in Zwartboek to an integral TV-effort are the massively dialog based structure and it's tendency to present events in sober, calm interiors. Zwartboek does contain outer environments and presents them via superb convince power, yet the majority of the essential happenings do unfold and take place on personal, or even on intimate registers, all these to occur in private, not rarely: in intimate surroundings, too.

Rachel Stein - Carice Van Houten - has to infiltrate the local Nazi establishment to strengthen the Dutch Resistance which she gets affiliated with. Meet Nazi Commander Ludwing Müntze, offered for you by Sebastian Koch. Müntze is the one Rachel will try to seduce and let me tell you this: the female has to put in amazingly little effort to twist Nazi Commander Ludwing Müntze around her fingers. So Rachel soon finds herself in the position of being able to intercept vital information from the Nazi Outpost to deliver it for the Dutch Resistance.

Let us notice a particular aspect of the story: Müntze. Müntze might be a Nazi, yet he is not a "proper Nazi" in the sense that he does not possess the inner conviction towards the legitimacy of Nazi ideology, or at least it seems that he does not. Müntze is kind of a victim of the circumstances, even tries to avoid violence - hah! - if it is possible, Müntze is kind of: Müntze.

You are left to form a cautious suspicion in the early portion of Zwartboek that Rachel and Müntze will go for Za Luv Thing for real, yet if your suspicion is a defendable one should deliver the corresponding question as one to be answered by the film. A strangely improbable, thus evidently unavoidable kind of love such a relation could give birth to: the love between a Jewish beauty and a Nazi. Well, there is a trick though, a quite nice one, too: the Jewish beauty is Existent and must conceal her Origins. The Nazi is: Non-Existent, but has to FAKE he IS Existent. Lethally ironic, or simply, solidly sad? You decide.



Improbable or even forbidden in the Eyes of the Third Reich such a love might be, Zwartboek precisely accounts and utilizes the one particular humane aspect that seems to be present and focally dominant in all human beings, I truly do not care if Black, Jew, White, or Bruce Lee: sovereignty. An ideology might present you any race whatsoever as a Hive Entity and claim any attitude to be possessed by this formation - yet no ideology is able to legitly claim potential to correctly describe and/or properly judge the Individual, as the Individual reigns in a position which is characterized by the maximum level of sovereignty a society or the mind can conceive. No option or proper tool of passing proper and final judgment over human Individual is given to any other human. An Individual is free to claim this false right to oneself: but one necessarily gives this right to ALL OTHER at the same time. Bloodshed is to commence by colliding realities, realities made of a zillion building blocks, all believed to be true. All of a sudden such Individual arrives to the conclusion that one is forced to form massive hate or even act upon the hate which is inevitably forged as the result of the arrogance one exhibited when claimed the Right and Potential to judge Properly, to judge Permanently.

Thus you can invent and certainly, even practice hate towards all or anything you wish to hate, and you will be able to find elements and circumstances to justify your hate. No matter what sick reality one invents for oneself, creation is nice 'nuff to offer place for it. In the long run I think we have to admit that hate towards anyone is a waste of precious time that could have been put to invent much more useful inner programs, approaches and thoughts fruity for all. If this sounds idealistic: that is why I told you, and this is why I laugh my ass off of haters.

Rachel and Müntze are both aware that they are but helpless role-players in a play in which the ornaments and basic elements of the set is created and formed by the Nazi ideology. Müntze is capable to recognize Rachel for what she ultimately is, though. One of the most brilliant scenes in Zwartboek in my opinion is when Rachel pulls Müntze's hands to her breasts and asks:

"Are these Jewish?"

The Resistance had it's better moments by the way: they accidentally expose their plans of attacking the Outpost,- what else would you call it when you drive a truck into a dead end, crash, and big ass, smuggled machine guns are dropping from the truck to the boots of the surrounding Nazi Troopers? A supersafe method to find yourself seeing this:



Zwartboek develops throughout a nicely structured conspiracyfoam in which different agendas of the different focal characters are guaranteed to surprise you on a couple of occasions. Verhoeven's latest delivery remains a stable installment to depict a strong World War II atmosphere to give you a highly defendable espionage experience, though the only aspect to stand out tremendously from the buildup is Carice van Houten's character both as real life person and the figure she depicts. She is a survivor, also a survivor who had quite enough of escaping she is. The great performance by Houten that dominates the film massively gives you a motion picture experience which remains strong and authentic to soak into even in spite of the monstrous length the film intimidates you with.



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