Not to be confused with its 1993 U.S. remake. I believe I had been planning to watch this during October, filled up on Halloween-y other films, and neglected to push it further down my queue. But it's just as well that I didn't save it for next October. Despite its designation as a thriller (and a title format typical thereof), it strikes me as more of a tragedy, with very little violence. European cinema does tend to blur the lines of genres as Americans know them.
Dutch lovers Rex and Saskia go on vacation in France. They get separated too long at a service station, and Rex becomes convinced that someone abducted Saskia. For the next three years, he mounts an expensive and generally fruitless campaign to gather information. At this point, he doesn't really hope to find her alive, nor does he claim a desire for vengeance; he just wants to know what happened. That's when the kidnapper, Raymond (no spoiler there; we see him preparing a fake injury Jame Gumb-style), reaches out to him with a worrisome proposal to grant his wish, betting that Rex, like the protagonist of Oldboy, will not punish if it means no answers.
We get to see Saskia long enough for a rough idea of what she's like, but I don't know how best to describe her. Perhaps the novella on which the movie is based tells more, or perhaps she was kept rather ordinary on purpose. The writing does seem realistic in most regards.
Rex comes across as something of a jerk toward her, but it soon becomes clear that he does love her in his own way. He actually takes up with another woman, Lieneke, while on his campaign. I guess she sticks around out of pity, because she knows she can't compete with a missing girlfriend.
Raymond, unsurprisingly, is the most interesting. But if you're hoping for an evil genius, well, we see so much of his trial and error that he comes across mainly as determined. I guess it's a little scary to think how easily someone might be able to pull off what he does.
What makes Raymond scarier is that he's not a likely suspect. He seems to treat his wife, daughters, and chemistry students decently (hmm, Walter White comes to mind). He even put himself in danger to save a kid's life once. His family does suspect him of adultery due to his frequent excursions, but probably nobody who claims to know him would peg him as anything so bad as a kidnapper.
This ties into Raymond's highly unusual motivation. I won't tell you what he does with Saskia, but apparently it's not driven by hatred, lust, or sadism. He has diagnosed himself with sociopathy, tho it normally doesn't show, and wanted to see whether he could bring himself to an uncharacteristic act of severe depravity, as a self-reassurance of free will and a test of whether he deserves to be called a hero for the aforementioned act of heroism.
It's such an odd way of thinking that I had to check the IMDb FAQ to make sure I understood. The only philosophers I can think of who might have talked along those lines are Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche. I was a little disappointed that the film doesn't spend more time expounding on it -- and that Rex makes no rebuttal of any kind. Then again, I can't relate much to Rex either.
Still, as I said, it's mostly believable. One upshot of this is a simple overall plot with a pretty slow pace. That slowness helps stave off confusion when we see events out of order. And of course, with this setup, no halfway-realistic ending could be all that happy.
OK, it's not all simple. There are a couple of metaphors interspersed here and there. Most notably, in keeping with the literary title translating to The Golden Egg, Saskia speaks of a recurring dream involving golden eggs. From an academic standpoint, you might call it fortunate that the metaphor lends itself to interpretation; from a critic's standpoint, I find it frustrating not to know for sure. If her dream is prophetic, so much for full realism.
If there's a moral that I can discern, it's "Avoid obsession. Curiosity that flies in the face of common sense will take you down a dark path indeed." Beyond that, I get the feeling that the writer has a fairly diseased mind.
If that's what you're in the mood for, go right ahead and watch. For my part, while it seems that most viewers love or hate The Vanishing, I find it about average.
No comments:
Post a Comment