Whereas the cinema of Federico Fellini bears evidence that Italians idolize a baroque and exuberant Catholicism, van Warmerdam claims the Calvinist variant is austere and scanty.
#1992 DE NOORDERLINGEN SERIES#
Voyeur Austere architecture with square windowsĪccording to Warmerdam, as stated in the television documentary series Allemaal Film (4), the Netherlands has a firm tradition of a Calvinist variant of Christianity. Further, if Verhoeven was perhaps always-already an American-styled director, judging from, among others, his relatively fast-paced Soldaat van Oranje ( Soldier of Orange, 1977), van Warmerdam’s cinema can, by contrast, be seen as rooted in a recognisably Dutch culture, albeit with a proviso. Van Warmerdam’s brother Marc is involved with his films, usually as producer, and his brother Vincent composes the musical score. Actor Jaap Spijkers and actress Ariane Schluter are among his regulars, just as is his wife Annet Malherbe, who has a role in most of his films.
Moreover, van Warmerdam gets sympathy votes from the general public for his refusal to compromise his artistic vision to commercial appeal, as well as for his loyalty to his cast and crew. Perhaps only his sixth, Grimm (2003), is considered as a minor picture, whereas his second, De Noorderlingen ( The Northerners, 1992), is acknowledged by many as his finest. Although Borgman is only his eighth film since then, the quality of his work is regarded as of a fine standard overall. Van Warmerdam was a theatre director and a painter before he started directing films at the age of thirty-three, his debut feature Abel ( Voyeur) from 1986 catapulting him to instant fame. With the exception of Paul Verhoeven, who, by the way, is a commercial director rather than an art-house filmmaker (closer to Steven Spielberg than to Ulrich Seidl), Alex van Warmerdam’s track record is perhaps the most impressive one of all living Dutch directors, and for that reason the monthly journal De Filmkrant gave him the honorary title ‘the white raven’ of today’s Dutch cinema (3).
Roskam, the Dardenne brothers), and Denmark (Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Nicolas Winding Refn) (2). Comparably small countries, Dutch film lovers tend to complain, always seem to fare so much better than the Netherlands at setting the agendas within the film festival circuit of quality art-house cinema, like Austria (Michael Haneke, Ulrich Seidl), Belgium (Michaël R. This complex is named after a popular Italian cartoon series of the 1970s about the only black chicken (Calimero) in a family of yellow ones who thinks that, as the underdog, he is treated unfairly. The selection as such was greeted in the Netherlands as if Dutch cinema, despite three Academy Award wins in the 1980s and 1990s, was finally released from what is called its ‘Calimero complex’ (1). That Borgman was no real contender for the festival prizes was only a side note, even though it is rumoured that the film was jury member Nicole Kidman’s favourite.
Practically all published items on Borgman (2013), no matter how tiny, mentioned the fact that this was the first Dutch film to enter the Cannes main competition since 1975, the year Jos Stelling’s debut feature Mariken van Nieumeghen was selected.
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