![]() Waldemar Kobus as Franken in ‘Black Book’.įans of Verhoeven are not just used to his outrageousness, we welcome it – it’s no wonder that his latest film, the historical lesbian nun drama Benedetta, has raised such a head of steam months before its Australian release. There have been many thrilling films about partisans fighting against the Nazi regime, but there’s only one where our heroine burns herself when dying her pubic hair to disguise her Jewish heritage. Black Book, however, is its own beast, dealing with serious matters like the Holocaust, but pulpy in tone and provocative in intent. But not like any we’ve seen before.Īs a setting, World War II can encompass a wide range of approaches to genre and tone, from the derring-do of The Dam Busters (1955) to the anarchic The Dirty Dozen (1967) or Kelly’s Heroes (1970), the epic sweep of The Longest Day (1962) or A Bridge Too Far (1977), to the grim Schindler’s List (1993) or Come and See (1985). ![]() Add in the growing suspicion that there’s a traitor in the ranks of the Resistance, and the stage is set for a tense wartime thriller. However, his second in command, the brutal Franken (Waldemar Kobus), is responsible for the deaths of her family, and so she is torn between her duty to the Resistance, her love for Müntze, and her desire for revenge against Franken. Tasked with seducing the local Nazi commandant Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch) for the cause, she finds herself falling in love with him. The set-up, which would later be echoed in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2011) is this: after the family sheltering her is killed, Dutch Jewish woman Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten) joins the Resistance. Rachel Stein (Carice van Houten) in ‘Black Book’. Verhoeven’s childhood in occupied Holland informed his presentation of the latter’s future fascist society and it’s interesting to speculate that the broader audience’s tendency to take his anti-fascist satire at face value compelled him to make Black Book, a comparatively straight-forward resistance thriller. Verhoeven had dealt with the War previously in his career, either directly in Soldier of Orange (1977) and All Things Pass (1981), or allegorically, as in Starship Troopers. And it’s made all the more uncomfortable and intriguing by being set in Nazi-occupied Holland during World War II. After all, this is man who gave us the lurid violence of RoboCop (1987) and Starship Troopers (1997), the unapologetic sexuality of Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995), and frequently both together, especially in his early Dutch films like Turkish Delight (1973) and Spetters (1980).īut 2005’s Black Book, his first Dutch film since 1983’s The Fourth Man, topped what had gone before: there’s gory violence, torture, nudity, sex, and all manner of excess. ![]() Black Book may be Paul Verhoeven’s most visceral film, and that’s saying something.
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