25. Where one sees violence, another finds beauty
In the last week of my holiday I visited the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam to see the exhibition on Werner Herzog. I read Heaven by Mieko Kawakami and visited the BUT Film Festival in Breda.
I.
Read Heaven and your throat gets tighter with every one of its 200 pages. You experience the impact that intense bullying has on the main character. He is constantly tormented, pressured and physically tortured by his classmates. In one scene, the bastards use him as a human football until he lies bleeding on the ground.
A glimmer of light appears when he receives a letter from Kojima, a girl in his class who is bullied just as badly. They meet a few times and a friendship forms, built on the victimhood they share but experience separately.
What makes this book so good is that writer Mieko Kawakami does not spare you as a reader. You read the gruesome details of the bullying and how the main character endures and observes it. When the protagonist finally finds the courage to confront the right-hand man of his biggest bully, the result is a chilling conversation that actually makes the situation even more frightening.
You are also made to think. What does it mean to be bad? And what is a friendship worth if the main thing you have in common is that you are both victims?
II.
Werner Herzog often seeks out people living in extreme circumstances in his work. This produces fascinating films. In Fitzcarraldo you follow how Herzog, without using tricks, has his characters haul a massive boat over a mountain in the Amazon. And Aguirre: der Zorn Gottes follows a search for the golden land of El Dorado while the expedition members slowly lose their minds.
I remain above all a fan of his documentaries. These too are about people who place themselves in extremes, by choice or by chance, and donât always realise it themselves. Or who simply canât help it. Look at Grizzly Man, about Timothy Treadwell who wanted to live among the bears as a human being. Or Into the Inferno, about volcanologists who donât shy away from the fiery violence but actively seek it out. The Fire Within is also about that.
At Eye this month you can still visit an overview exhibition of Herzogâs work. The film museum presents a selection of key scenes from the filmmakerâs oeuvre, along with some context in the form of archival documents, letters and a few props (the wooden stake from Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, for example).
These are fragments that are not often screened, but if you, like me, have a Blu-ray collection of all his films, there is little to discover here. The documents presented are not interesting enough either. It is very good that Eye gives people the opportunity to immerse themselves in the madness that Herzog manages to capture in every corner of the world, together with that characteristic voice-over and dramatic classical music. But the finest thing this exhibition has produced is that you can see his films in their entirety on the big screen again. You can catch those in Eyeâs regular cinema halls in September.
III.
The BUT Film Festival in Breda has been around for 18 years, but this week was my first visit. BUT stands for b-film, underground and trash, so you can expect anything. It usually comes down to this: poor actors, lots of blood and nudity, and terrible dialogue. A celebration of madness.
Under the guise of âlet me first see if this is for meâ, I watched two films at this edition. The festival itself is small-scale and charmingly rough around the edges. Projectionists showing the wrong films, overloaded speakers and hastily assembled projection screens. It all goes with the territory. Someone in the audience shouts âyayâ when breasts appear on screen.
Because certain copyrights on Winnie-the-Pooh have expired, all sorts of horror films are suddenly appearing featuring the famous bear. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey got a lot of media attention but at BUT the next Pooh horror was already showing.
The English-language Winnie the Pooh: Master of Puppets was made by German director Timo Rose and has nothing to do with Blood and Honey. The 46-year-old indie director already has 29 films to his name, with titles like Virus of the Dead, Mutation - Annihalation and Karl the Butcher vs. Axe. In Master of Puppets all kinds of murders are committed by a stuffed bear that doesnât actually look like Winnie the Pooh but goes by that name. There is absolutely no making head or tail of it. The makers went overboard with colour filters and post-production effects. The film knows all too well that it is badly made and is as a result barely watchable.
The second film was also not good (you donât go to BUT to see the new Godfather), but cult classic Magnetron Massacre was at least more entertaining. About a man who is constantly served revolting food by his wife, until he gets so fed up that he murders her in a drunken rage and puts her in the microwave. When he accidentally eats a piece of the meat, he discovers that human flesh tastes just fine to him.
The film is therefore about accidental cannibalism, but it is above all a comedy that squeezes one joke completely dry. There are a number of genuinely good moments in it, but you see very little of the promised massacre from the title.
These two films, despite their quality, left me wanting more. And it is wonderful that these kinds of festivals for oddities exist. Until next year, BUT!
PS.
Matthijs van Nieuwkerk, by his own account, gave the most important interview he will ever give to NRC. Nine months after the Volkskrant wrote extensively about boundary-crossing behaviour at De Wereld Draait Door and the tyrannical outbursts of Van Nieuwkerk, the presenter responds at length.
It is a strange article. On the one hand, it is clear that Van Nieuwkerk is genuinely ashamed of how he behaved and offers apologies. On the other hand, it is somewhat weak that he barely addresses the Volkskrant article and cancels a follow-up interview with NRC because he doesnât like the questions. âAgain, Van Nieuwkerk shows himself to be a man who likes to be in controlâ, the paper writes.
All the more striking, then, that Van Nieuwkerk agreed to the photo in which he throws his hat like a frisbee for his happy puppy to chase.
If I come across a YouTube video with the title âThe Quest to Beat jimmypoopinsâ, Iâve already clicked before I know what itâs about. But the YouTube algorithm struck gold again, as this turns out to be a fantastic story about speedrunners trying to complete Ninja Gaiden II (NES) as fast as possible. It is not only a gripping video about rival players pushing each other to great heights, but ultimately also about an extraordinary dedication to making yourself believe in yourself.
Just over a year ago I started the anime series One Piece. With more than a thousand episodes on the clock, that feels a bit like climbing Everest â but lying on the couch in front of the TV. I am more than three hundred episodes in.
Netflix has now released the first season of its live-action adaptation. I couldnât ignore my morbid curiosity and watched a bit. It is what youâd expect: it follows the anime closely, but with less colour, flat action music and less humour. Perhaps the worst part: itâs boring. What makes One Piece enjoyable for me is the chemistry between the characters. The best episodes of the anime are when the pirates are just hanging around doing silly things. There is not yet any room for that in the Netflix version.
Polygon headlines its article about the first season: Netflix grinds the greatest manga ever down until only content remains. Content. In other words: vapid garbage. Ouch, shots fired.
Bob Dylan sent (new) lyrics to his fan Post Malone so he could make a song from them. And then⌠nothing.
In the Volkskrant a fine tribute to The X-Files, whose first episode was broadcast nearly thirty years ago. âThe show remains one of the most innovative, radical and influential series in television historyâ, writes Mark Moorman. The X-Files is a slow burn for me. I still watch a few episodes now and then, but the monster-of-the-week format makes the series hard to binge. It is also fun to spot young actors in small roles, like Jack Black suddenly turning up in season 3. Screen Rant has a list.
I am reading the complete collection of Jeff Smithâs comic Bone, a brick of 1,300 pages. I have been wanting to read this fantasy adventure since my teenage years. So far, 200 pages in, it has been pure enjoyment.
Speaking of fantasy adventures: I finished Final Fantasy XVI (a mediocre and absolutely wonderful game at the same time) and have started Baldurâs Gate 3 on the PlayStation 5.
Internet flash classic Badgers is turning twenty (31 million views in the fifteen years the video has been on YouTube). To mark the occasion, MrWeebl made a new version.
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