1 September, 2006
By The Associated Press
Source: International Herald Tribune
VENICE, Italy — Dutch prison guards humiliate suspected collaborators jailed after Holland’s liberation from the Nazis in director Paul Verhoeven’s “Black Book,” which premiered Friday at the Venice Film Festival.
The scene brings to mind images of Iraqi prisoners being abused by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison.
But the Hollywood director, returning to Dutch filmmaking, said that while the prison scene has particular political resonance today, the story and the scene existed long before the Abu Ghraib scandal emerged.
“It was probably because of Abu Ghraib that I focused on it, but it was not that I wrote the scene because of the problems in Abu Ghraib. That scene was written before,” Verhoeven said. “In these circumstances, there is a rudeness and cruelty that is predominant in human beings.”
“Black Book” is the story of wartime betrayal and survival in Nazi-occupied Holland, focused on a young Jewish singer who joins the resistance after her parents and brother are killed during an attempt to escape to Belgium.
The title refers to a notebook that contains the truth of who betrayed both the Dutch resistance and Jews attempting to flee. The story is fictional, though based on actual people and events.
It was a story Verhoeven had been carrying around since the 1970s and much of the material used was unearthed during work on the 1977 Dutch film “Soldier of Orange,” in which he examined heroic acts as much as this film examines betrayal.
Verhoeven said he looked for a project in his native Holland partly out of frustration with the kinds of projects being promoted in Hollywood in the post-Sept. 11-era, focusing on pure entertainment.
“It’s true, after the last movie I did in Los Angeles, ‘Hollow Man,’ I felt as empty as the movie. I was trying to find something attractive to me personally,” Verhoeven said.
“Black Book” will be the Netherlands’ official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at next year’s Academy Awards. It is one of 21 films vying for the coveted Golden Lion award, which will be handed out at the end of the festival on Sept. 9.
