Character
by Mike van Diem
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Betty Schuurman, Fedja van Huêt, Jan Decleir, Pavlik Jansen op de Haar, Tamar van den DopDirector: Mike van Diem
Brand: Sony
Writer: Mike van Diem
Producer: Dick Maas
Producer: Jerzy Rutowicz
Producer: Laurens Geels
Writer: Laurens Geels
Writer: Ferdinand Bordewijk
Writer: Ruud van Megen
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Dutch (Original Language); English (Original Language); French (Original Language); German (Original Language)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Running Time: 122 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-02-04
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Character
Movie Review: No one gives an inch in psychological twister "Character"
Summary: 5 Stars
I visit CHARACTER,1997 Foreign film of the Year,ever so often and never tire of it.This Netherlands-made Mike Van Diem written and directed thriller based out of a 1938 novel entitled "Katadreuffe und Dreverhoeven en Karakter" ages like a fine wine and gets deeper and more character complex every time I view it.
CHARACTER was released the same year as fellow epics TITANIC AND AMISTAD;and in the Foreign category,CHARACTER brought home another Oscar just as two years prior another Netherlands film,the amazing ANTONIA'S LINE,had been victorious.The fact that CHARACTER beat out BEYOND THE SILENCE from Germany and FOUR DAYS IN SEPTEMBER from Brazil put this masterpiece in really fine company that year.
As INSUFFICIENTLY stated IMO by Amazon's reviewer, CHARACTER is really a three way struggle between Father,Son and Mother in a battle of stubborn pride, obsession and control.All three main characters are all caught in this cat-and-mouse,dog-eat-dog psychological thriller set in 1923 Rotterdam.This screenplay/book is right out of the Charles Dickens mode full of bleak beginnings and endings,class struggles,acceptance,greed,lust,pride and vengeance that is particularly reminiscent of Dickens' NICHOLAS NICKLEBY IMO.Will good come out of all of this suffering???
Dreverhoeven is the court bailiff who is as "Scroogesque" as one can be.He forecloses on everyone without blinking an eye.He has a housekeeper who never speaks to him,neither him to her;yet he "fornicates" (why we are never certain why either of them do this)with her one evening.Six weeks later,with child,Miss Katadreuffe resigns as housekeeper.She wants nothing from Dreverhoeven.He proposes marriage 13 times and she quietly refuses proudly and stubbornly each time.A son is born named Jacob Willem.He catches glimpses of this "father" here and there,but has only one constant thought of him planted in his brain by his hardened mother:"We have need of nothing from him." As Jacob grows,the deafening silence that exists with his mother and now the involvement here and there with his father as a money lender increases Jacob's fierce and independent spirit to live free of both of them.This he continually finds impossible to do.The mother is austere and silent;the father is cruel and calculating;the son has terrible problems with both of them,yet is generally favored well by all of his coworkers.Things many times throughout this film come to a boil and the viewer is asked to consider the character motivation of each of the three principles, all the while realizing that the stress and strain is building Jacob into a strong and confidaent man.These are REAL and ALIVE and TREMENDOUSLY INTERESTING characters for those who love this kind of a film.It is nail-biting and tense,and yet has an underlying sweetness AND sadness about it.The film is first rate in all departments from it's look, to it's editing to a wonderful soundtrack by Het Paleis Van Boem.
14 time nominee,4 time winner Jan Declair (ANTONIA"S LINE ,DAENS etc.) is the bailiff/tyrant Deverhoeven; Freja Van Huet portrays Jacob Willem and Betty Schuurman is Miss Katadreuffe.All three are multiple European actor winners.This is a first rate acting job in a first rate film.The fact that Award winning director has done nothing since CHARACTER is a mystery to me.Imdb stops his resume with his triumph here.
1997 was a great year for films.Watch CHARACTER and you will surely agree.EXTREMELY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Summary of Character
CHARACTER - DVD MovieCharacter, the 1997 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, is an Oedipal struggle both primal and epic with a Dickensian sweep and a dark Kafka-esque center. The film starts with a heated argument between two men, and when the elder is found dead with a knife in his chest the younger man is arrested and revealed to be his son. The story begins in flashback: the father, Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir from Antonia's Line), is a fearless Scrooge-like moneylender who has cold-heartedly built his fortune by collecting debts and foreclosing on the poor. His son, Katadreuffe (Fedja van Huet), is the offspring of a single night's passion with his housekeeper--in an interesting twist he hounds her to marry him, and she leaves with the boy to raise him on her own. When she dies, father and son become locked in a fascinating battle: as Katadreuffe finds him calling in the law, Dreverhaven buys up his debts and attempts to drive him into bankruptcy. Katadreuffe eagerly takes up every challenge his father throws at him in a perverse show of strength and filial defiance. Adapted by first-time director Mike Van Diem from the 1938 novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk, this handsome epic is assured from the first frame, and excellent performances by Decleir (whose imposing Dreverhaven seems to tower over all by will as much as by size) and van Huet bring to life this study of two tortured psyches whose love emerges only through conflict and competition. --Sean Axmaker
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