One of the Greatest Films I've Ever Seen

Rating: 9/10 (18 April 2007)

Carice Van Houten, an actress I've never seen before in a film, delivers one of the finest performances I've ever seen. One of the most beautiful creatures and most fascinatingly deep actresses I've ever watched, she as the heroine practically makes the movie what it is. Her character is very well-developed in the film's writing, to what I imagine is a highly personal extent, and to see her keep her feelings constantly in check, act under great pressure, show such self-reliance, and feel so heavily at once, not to mention sing so beautifully, is riveting to see.
Paul Verhoeven is a director whose films have always interested me on account of the inextricable edge, something he cannot help but give all of his movies, even those he's made in the American mainstream like RoboCop and Basic Instinct. He is an artful director, but does not thumb his nose at bald representations of immorality, evil, ruthless violence, and also completely casual exposure to sex and genitalia. This does not make him self-indulgent or partial to shock value as many would think and as many directors are. What this makes him is a director who does what artists must do, and that is take chances. He is an unflinchingly bold filmmaker.
The window into Verhoeven remains fogged. After 35 years and over a dozen films, the analytical outlook on the Dutch filmmaker should've by now congealed somehow or other, nevertheless, as with fellow agitator Brian De Palma, to mention him in cinephile crowds is still a capricious thing. Arguing masterpiece or monumental bomb for Showgirls and Starship Troopers is just the corner piece of Verhoeven's discordance. What keeps Basic Instinct and RoboCop from being acknowledged by so many "serious" critics as the crackerjack works they are, on the other hand, isn't so much their standing as Hollywood thriller aerobics as their unapologetically turbulent manner, the persistent madness on the screen pushing us into wondering if he's for real. Yes, Verhoeven is for real, and never more so than when confronting religion. The visualizations of rapture and hellfire in The Fourth Man are too animal to be deconstructed into a crafty gag, while beneath the medieval raping, looting, and salivating of Flesh + Blood are eruptions of Christian images.
What I shouldn't do here is beat around the bush about the cinematic style and how well-made the movie is, which I tend to do a lot because I happen to find production values and a story with depth and weight very important. What I should do is simply state that this film happens to have a lot of things that I always, without fail, enjoy seeing. The plot is loaded with revenge, intricate plots, sneakiness, impostors, and other such relative things. The screenplay is wonderful overall and, despite how much I know that American audiences will enjoy it, I believe that America could hardly produce a film so founded upon characters that are truly unpredictable in their stances as good or evil. The movie itself is of course anti-war, and the heroine is a woman even Satan could sympathize with. However, it also relies on a lack of conservative scrupulous judgment on the viewer's part. Sebastian Koch plays an SS officer whom Carice Van Houten's character must seduce in order to infiltrate the group of Nazis that have massacred her family and other Jewish refugees. But can the audience feel sorry for him? Can we recognize that there is a true individual beneath his politically horrendous exterior? Black Book scores as high as a movie possibly could in all of its departments, because the filmmakers have an honest, naked perspective on humanity and the truth about good, evil and that which is in between. And because of this, its characters are completely real and intensely affecting, its surprises are genuine to our intelligence, and we are fully engrossed. It's one of the greatest films I've ever seen.