A good movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was the latest movie directed by Alex van Warmerdam, I was quite eager to check it out. I know that the members of my film club are huge fans of his work but, even though I have seen all his movies, to be honest, I usually struggle to get into them and this new directorial effort was not an exception, I’m afraid. In fact, the first half was pretty straightforward, much more than his usual stuff. However, obviously, it didn’t last forever and from the moment one of the characters (who suddenly became the lead which wasn’t the case at all before) planted a nail into the foot of one of his colleagues, the whole thing went completely sideways. The end-result was some kind of mix of absurdist Dutch humor (van Warmerdam is the all-time master of the genre) with some Lynchian mindf*ck and a dash of ‘Being John Malkovich’. Sure, it might sound intriguing but, to be honest, I really had a hard time to care about all this. I mean, I really admire van Warmerdam’s unique directing style, the guy simply doesn’t care about the basic film narrative conventions which is really cool. Unfortunately, I don’t find his approach really interesting or entertaining though. I was also not really sure about the heavy anti-religious message. I mean, you could develop a whole movie about the subject but van Warmerdam spent maybe 10 mins on this so you might wonder why he bothered at all. Still, the ending came out pretty much out of nowhere and I have to admit that it was actually pretty awesome. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really work for me, I still give it some extra points for being so original and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.