I really love Paul Verhoeven

Rating: 9/10 (7 May 2007)

I really love Paul Verhoeven. I love his outrageousness. I love his chutzpah. I love the way he only seems to have a limited knowledge of political correctness and chooses to give it the finger when he encounters it. I love the way he turned up at the Razzies to collect the Worst Film and Worst Director awards for "Showgirls" (sure it's bad, but it's entertaining). I've not seen his early films, but I have loved everything since "Flesh + Blood" in 1985.
"Zwartboek" is interesting because if you take away the extreme sex, violence and horror what you are left with is an old fashioned Sunday afternoon WWII melodrama. You know the kind of thing. You've seen it a million times. In the dying days of WWII a plucky Jewish singer, hiding out from the Nazi's, starts to work as a spy for the Resistance. She dyes her hair blonde (all her hair) and starts to get close to a senior Nazi. She falls in love...
So far, so typical, but it is a good film. Not a film, perhaps, that he would have got away with making with an English cast. (It's mostly in Dutch.) There is a interesting ambiguity in that not all of the Nazi's are bad and not all of the Resistance are good. In fact, some of the Resistance are as racist as the Nazi's. Verhoeven winding up his audience again? Good man.