CHARACTER
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Sons Pictures Classics/ First Floor Features Director: Mike van Diem Writer: Ferdinand Bordewijk, Mike van Diem, Laurens Geels, Ruud van Megen Cast: Jan Decleir, Tamar van den Dop, Bernard Droog, Fred Goessens, Hans Kesting, Lou Landre, Victor Low, Betty Schuurman, Fedja Van Huet, Frans Vorstman
Stories abound about adolescent men who rebel against their fathers in search of freedom. "Character" deals with such a rebellion, but with a difference: the young man on whom the story centers has a dad who does not live with him, seems to want nothing to do with him, and by rights should be just about the last person a kid would want to free himself from. As the tale develops, however, we see that geography notwithstanding, the stolid father is very much involved in the lives of his boy and the lad's mother though he had not spent a single day with either from the time the kid was born.
What gives "Character" its claim to award-winning status (it won the Oscar for best foreign language movie of 1997) is only partly its gripping narrative. Set in Rotterdam and filmed by Rogier Stoffers, virtually the entire picture, directed by Mike van Diem, is shrouded in shadow, symbolic of the despairing mood of all of its principal male characters. Taking place in the 1920s, it exhibits a Netherlands populace ground down by unemployment and becoming increasingly sympathetic to the entreaties of the Communist Party--which urges the working class to demonstrate and even burn down the factories of the hated propertied classes. Told in flashback, "Character" opens on a violent confrontation between Katadreuffe (Fedja Van Huet) and his larger-than-life father, Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir) in a large loft-like office occupied by the older man, who is entering figures in a ledger. In the film's most theatrical scene, the young man strides briskly to his father's desk and almost literally flies at him, determined to do the old man great injury. When Dreverhaven is found dead of a knife wound to the stomach, Katadreuffe is hauled away by the police to a bleak cell where he is questioned by three interrogators and proceeds to unfold the story of life with father.
From what we have seen so far, it appears clear enough that the young man has murdered his father, but his crime comes across to the audience as justified by circumstances. We learn that some twenty years earlier, Dreverhaven seduced his housekeeper, Joba (Betty Schuurman), in a one- night-stand that led to Katadreuff's birth. Joba had left the man's employ shortly after becoming pregnant and, like a nun in the strictest orders, seems to have taken a vow of silence. Indifferent to her young son, she encourages him to earn his own living and leave her house. While many children brought up in such Dickensian circumstances of poverty and neglect might choose the road of drugs and crime, Katadreuffe became determined to succeed in business but not without trying: he sacrifices the possibility of a loving relationship with the beautiful Lorna te George (Tamar van den Dop) in favor of hard study in his endeavor to rise as high as he can in a prestigious Rotterdam law firm. Requiring a loan to pursue his studies, he unwittingly accepts credit from a bank owned by his emotionally remote father, who uses his position as creditor to destroy the young man.
"Karakter," as the movie is spelled in the original Dutch, gets its title from the notion of the narrator (Katadreuffe) that his character and that of his mother are quite different. Budgeted at three million dollars--a high figure by Dutch standards--Mike Van Diem's movie, based on a novel by F. Bordewijk, evokes the ways in which serious Dutch films, and perhaps sober European films in general, differ from those constructed by Hollywood studios. As bleak as George Sluizer's 1988 movie "The Vanishing"--which ends with the burial alive of a man and his girlfriend but was remade by the Americans with a more upbeat ending--"Character" is as bleak a description of a father-son relationship as has been portrayed on any screen. What is particularly absorbing, though, are the film's nuances. Though at first view the brutal Dreverhaven represents unmitigated evil, evicting his non- rent-paying tenants by the busload and pressing bankruptcy claims in the courts, he turns out to be a man with a conscience under his fascist-like exterior. He does not dismiss his former housekeeper, Joba, as an insignificant victim of his lust, but has a more puzzling set of feelings toward her. Even more engaging is the intricacy of his dealings with his son: the movie veers toward an unexpected twist in its concluding scenes, which stagger the imagination.
Van Diem unfolds the film with a succession of visceral scenes, highlighted by one in which Dreverhaven, who emerges from his bed naked to inquire about a communist- inspired riot taking place outside his home, is stoned, kicked and reviled by the unwashed masses. As heavy as the movie gets, Van Diem does not ignore the opportunity to inject some humor into the piece, the fun represented by the kindly but prognathic man who becomes Katadreuffe's mentor, and with the possibility of romance evoked by the lovely Tamar van den Dop as Katadreuff's co-worker, Lorna te George.
Van Diem has a good feel for the period, permeating the film with the automobiles of the twenties and extracting examples of the cultural norms of the era. Particularly amusing is the custom of co-workers calling each other by their last names even after months of familiarity. Not Rated. Running time: 114 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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