Oh, this is one I've been looking
forward to. To avoid any confusion, this is the original, Dutch
version. I have never seen the American remake, and I have no
intention of seeing it. I know how the ending was changed, and I
think it's a travesty.
The thing I find fascinating about The
Vanishing is how it completely breaks from the traditions of
Hollywood. While I have no idea of what's normal in the Dutch film
industry, American films typically attempt to either teach morality
or subvert it. Either the hero wins, or the villain wins. Here, the
struggle between good and evil isn't even present. While this film
could be said to have a “villain” the sense of an antagonistic
character, who is also a murderer, its protagonist is so far removed
from heroic morality that the conflict driving the plot represents
something much more complicated that simple good or evil.
There are only three characters who
have any relevance to the story, so it should be fairly simple to
explain the plot. A man named Rex (Gene Bervoets) is traveling with
his wife, Saskia (Johanna ter Steege), when she disappears. It's
made clear to the audience exactly who the villain is, although we
don't see the actual abduction. We're then given the villain,
Raymond's (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) back story. The movie
eventually culminates years later with Rex, obsessed with finding out
what happened to Saskia, finally coming into contact with Raymond.
Raymond says that he will show Rex what
happened to Saskia if he takes a pill to knock him out... or Rex
could go to the police and tell them to investigate Raymond, but
likely never know what he did to Saskia. In the final scene, famous
in Europe but not so much in the United States, Raymond wakes up
buried alive, his question of what happened to Saskia now answered.
The primary mysteries of the film are
Saskia's fate and Raymond's motivation. Raymond's back story builds
the tension for both of these. We see him as a person with a duality
about him. He's a happy, friendly, likable family man, who
periodically goes out and makes unsuccessful attempts to kidnap
women. We see his methods and his calculations for how long he'd be
able to keep them unconscious to get to his destination. However, we
don't have any context for why he's doing this. It's a fascinating
way of creating suspense with audiences who are used to killers
having throwaway motives that are spouted off on a whim. This movie
reverses that: the murder is unimportant, the motive is everything.
The eventual reveal is both amazing and
bizarre: Raymond was motivated by a rejection of destiny. As a
child, he once jumped from a balcony because his instincts told him
not to. Thus, in his mind, he escaped from a deterministic universe
by severely injuring himself. Later, he saved a little girl from
drowning while out with his family, convincing himself that it was in
his nature to be a good and heroic person. Therefore, he attempted
to escape from that fate as well by doing something horrible.
I think this idea, that the biological
determinism of survival and social cooperation represents what we
humans call “destiny,” is the basis of the entire film. We watch
Rex continue to hunt for Saskia, long after he's given up any hope
for her survival, or even for justice. He destroys the relationships
in his life, bankrupts himself, and ruins his own peace of mind,
purely out of morbid curiosity. He just wants to know what happened
to her, rejecting the “destiny” that most people have of not
knowingly allowing a clearly demented murderer to drug you.
The final act of the film is strange to
watch. Rex and Raymond have a surprising level of intimacy. By all
rights, Rex should be trying to kill Raymond. Instead, they have a
detailed discussion of the events surrounding the crime. When
Raymond finally makes a direct statement that he killed Saskia, Rex
responds with a brief dirty look, and they carry on like nothing else
happened. These are men who have ceased to care about the moral
implications of anything they're doing, existing completely outside
of biological determinism, one by choice, and the other by
compulsion.
The director actually seems to embrace
this mindset himself, as many scenes that should be tense and
horrifying are, in fact, played in a very comical manner. Raymond's
repeated failures to kidnap women are played for laughs, as if the
subject deserves no sensitivity. Even the music is often
lighthearted.
This is a movie I strongly recommend.
The story is so interesting that you won't even care about the
subtitles. The characters are interestingly written and well acted.
And the fact that they needed to remake it, instead of just releasing
this film in theaters in the US is an indictment of American
moviegoers.
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