THE VANISHING (1991)
A film review by Lon Ponschock
Copyright 1995 Lon Ponschock
Directed by George Sluizer Stars a Dutch cast
"The eternal not knowing...
that's the worst thing."
-- from The Vanishing --
It hooked me. After a bunch of false starts in watching this foreign film--winner of all kinds of prizes--it hooked me and I had to finish it. I had started watching the show on several occasions and it looked pretty much like the average import. But it hooked me with the idea of 'man who has to know' beyond all costs, out of time ... forever.
THE VANISHING is a mystery. It concerns the disappearance of 'Saskia' and the search to find out what happened to her by her lover. This search goes on over years, starts and stops, always in the background of the man's life-- an obsession.
This man is confronted by another who will tell him, he says, what he needs to know about Saskia. From there, the viewer is taken on a psychological journey into the minds of two men: one obsessed, the other a sociopath.
It hooked me.
But THE VANISHING said something different to me than 'what is the perfect crime'. In the old Hitchcockian mode we have seen many variations on this and I, for one, just don't care a whole lot about crime stories.
No.
What hooked me was the 'need to know' at any cost. The drama turns on this. The man's love turns on this. And the difference between the casual discussion of what it means to sustain a loss and the reality are here ... in THE VANISHING.
"She didn't give you the chance to
not to love her "
-- from the film --
It hooked me.
-- lon
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