Jason KlorfeinThe Daily Northwestern

I expect different things from different film critics, but when I read a review in a newspaper, I want to be entertained. I love David Lynch, so of course I love reading the reviews from Amy Taubin and Nathan Lee who praise Inland Empire, probably because it touches on their favorite motifs that they’ll discuss in any review: queerness/feminism, artifice and cultural schizophrenia. Yet there’s nothing more boring for non-partisans than for a fanboy to praise his idol, or a critic who is always gravitating towards the same themes in different movies. The most interesting and entertaining critics, like Roger Ebert or Jonathan Rosenbaum, are the ones I’m never quite sure of what movies they’ll praise or pan. And this column is supposed to entertain.

So, if I’m going to say “man, you’ve got to see Black Book,” a Dutch WWII film, that opened recently at the Evanston Century Theatre, it’s only fair that I acknowledge that I’m a big fan of the director, Paul Verhoeven (Showgirls, Basic Instinct, Robocop). For great, slick Hollywood entertainment it’s interesting how detached and plastic his movies look in comparison to the lollipop colors of Michael Bay and other action sci-fi films of the 90s. Compare the flat, monochromatic spaceship sets of Starship Troopers to the intricate, rich starship corridors in Event Horizon, released in the same year. Even the ridiculously over-the-top Showgirls’ red and green color palate feels fake and not at all like sensory overkill. The artificial aesthetic of his movies reflects (here we go for pet themes) that people are basically cartoons. Elizabeth Berkley is ludicrously intense in Showgirls, but her goals of becoming a star dancer are so ridiculous that her out-there performance kind of makes sense. Yet these films’ attitude is never condescending, because they exist in a rare and very special ambivalence. His films aren’t simply “screwing the man.” The crotch scene in Basic Instinct can’t simply be defended as a criticism of the horny male gaze present in movies. It is after all, indulging in the same action it could be condemning. His movies have a strange ambivalence; they’re satires and criticisms, yes, but they have an out-there energy that’s rare in action movies.

Yet to call Las Vegas and Denise Richards – as a dimpled space-Nazi – stupid is easy. But Black Book is different. A movie about Dutch Resistance fighters and the aftermath of WWII presents more historical and emotional complexities and I’ve wavered on whether Verhoeven uses the story’s potential to complicate his portrayal of “plastic people.” Toward the end of World War II, Rachel (Carice Von Houten) a Dutch Jewish resistance fighter, spies on an SS officer, Ludwig (Sebastian Koch), but soon falls in love with him. Yet the officer isn’t the monster we think and the Dutch resistance are selfish, disreputable people who could give a damn about the Jews. They’d sell out their comrades at a moment’s notice.

As a Verhoeven fanboy, of course I consumed the film hunting for intellectual importance. But really, see Black Book. Beyond the film theory it has what helps decide which movies stick with you: a weird, sometimes joyous energy. Toward the end of the film, Rachel is captured by a former Resistance member, and given a lethal over-dose of Insulin. While her attacker is cheered outside on a balcony above sunny, smiley Dutch people, she finds a lucky, life saving chocolate bar. Rachel dizzily walks outside, and escapes by jumping off the balcony, crowd-surfing on top of the people below, in the bright sunshine. It’s spectacular.4

Communication sophomore Jason Klorfein is a PLAY film columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].