Dutch treats?

Berkshire arts organizations are collaborating on a joint program for next summer, to celebrate Dutch culture, so I decided to look at films from the Netherlands for a possible series at the Clark. Never aware of Holland as a hotbed of cinema, I started with two of the the best reviewed I could find.

Twin Sisters (De Tweeling.) Though this is basically Beaches-with-Nazis, I was strangely tolerant of its heart-tugging. I have not in fact seen Beaches, but it’s rather legendary as a women’s relationship weepie based on a bestselling novel, which is certainly the quality that got this film Miramax distribution and an Oscar nom for best foreign film. It begins in 1926 when the two sisters are peremptorily separated at their father’s funeral, one to a wealthy Dutch aunt, one to a dirtbag German Catholic uncle. The film weaves together their separate journeys through life and intermittent reunions, played by three pairs of actresses at different ages, with the young women in the middle being attractive enough to hold the whole thing together. Now this is unabashed melodrama, so I was also tolerant of the music, which was appropriately Germanic and operatic. Through the decades of the sometimes creaky plot, the sisters’ relationship becomes interestingly emblematic of that between Holland and Germany, close but antithetical, distant but primordial. Not a great film by any means, but I wouldn’t rule it out of a potential series. (2002, dvd, n.)

Soldier of Orange. Paul Verhoeven is the only Dutch director that I have ever heard of, because he came to America for Robocop and went on to a Hollywood blockbuster career. This film also explores the relationship between Holland and Germany through the crucible of World War II. It’s based on the memoir of an aristocratic young student who becomes involved in the Resistance, and eventually returns from service as spy and RAF bomber as an aide to Queen Wilhelmina. The film begins in 1938 with a hazing ritual for freshman, out of which six young men become friends, with each of them typifying a different relationship to the Germans when the war comes. Rutger Hauer is actually quite nuanced as the lead character, and Jeroen Krabbe is also good as his best friend, making this a character study as well as a war thriller, not to mention Verhoeven’s usual focus on sex. I will check out others of his Dutch films, but wouldn’t mind showing this. (1977, dvd, n.)