The Nerve Film Lounge: Q&A: Paul Verhoeven


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Paul Verhoeven's films have been accused of misogyny, homophobia and fascism. I doubt the fervent cult following for disreputable fare like Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Starship Troopers would have it any other way. With Black Book, the Dutch-born director makes an apparent bid for arthouse respectability. Fortunately, he pulls off a European period piece without sacrificing his penchant for sleaze and provocation. Black Book's detractors have labeled it a cross between Showgirls and Schindler's List, but it's more akin to a combination of Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and Jean-Pierre Melville's French Resistance epic Army of Shadows. While Black Book opens and closes with scenes set in '50s Israel, it focuses on the hectic life of Rachel (Carina van Houten), a Dutch-Jewish woman hiding from the Nazis in 1944 Holland. Immediately she dines with an obnoxious Christian family that has allowed her to stay with them, their house is blown up, forcing her to go on the run again. Soon afterwards, a family reunion turns into a major tragedy. While she eventually joins the Dutch Resistance, she finds that it's rife with anti-Semitism; the narrative pivots around betrayals and reversals, which continue until the very final scene. The first Verhoeven film ever to be accused of being too politically correct (by several French and American critics), it still contains several images which are soon to become infamous. — Steve Erickson

Black Book throws us immediately into Rachel's story without explaining her background. Was that always a part of the original script, or did it emerge during the editing?
No, it was always that way. My co-writer Gerard Soeteman feels that American movies do too much exposition. It would be more interesting to get the facts about someone's life a bit later, when you know them better. When we were working on a project based on a Russian novel, we showed the first draft to studios. Everyone always wanted to know more about the main character. Gerard really went against that. He said, "Let people figure it out later." Rachel's actions speak for her. It's not necessary to explain everything.

Black Book

You know a lot about her after twenty minutes, but not in the very beginning. That's the way Gerard often writes. American filmmakers mostly try to make character very clear and set everything up at the beginning. I don't think what we did is wrong — I like it.

How was the film received in the Netherlands?
Extremely well. Not so much by the critics, who were as aggressive at stopping me as in the '70s and early '80s. But the audience reacted in a phenomenal way. It's the most successful R-rated Dutch film since 1981, which was also a movie I made, Spetters. People really embraced it. In the street, people have recognized me from television and come up to me to shake my hand and say "That was a great movie." Nothing that I might have feared or expected happened. The audience wasn't angry that it portays the Dutch Resistance in an unflattering light. All the shadows in the film, including the Dutch girl having an affair with a German Nazi officer, were accepted, even the behavior of the Dutch after the war towards the collaborators. I think the Dutch were knowledgeable enough to know that these things, more or less, had happened. There's been a lot of research done by young historians, who were not prejudiced and just looked at statistics and all that stuff. They know that not all Dutch people were in the Resistance, and not all Resistance members were heroes. Making it explicit did not bother them. There was a scholarly book written a few years ago called Grey Past, which basically dealt with the real numbers. How many people were in the Resistance? Very few. How many people waited three years to see if the ball would roll to the German or Allied side? Ninety percent. All these numbers have been investigated. By the time I made the movie, people had a good feeling for what was true or false. It was showing a truth they were aware of but nobody had addressed.

Do you think your time working in Hollywood influenced your approach to storytelling in Black Book?
If you look at my earlier Dutch movies in comparison to Black Book, which were written by the same screenwriter, there's a more compelling narrative drive. It comes from American filmmaking, really. After working on six or seven American films, I have more respect for the rules of dramaturgy. In my opinion, it's not much more than trying to keep the audience glued to the movie and making sure their interest is there.

Starship Troopers

The earlier Dutch movies have development, but it's character or relationship development. There's not such a forward drive. In some very good European movies, like Fellini's La Dolce Vita, there's not much narrative. If you find the narrative, you will find it only after seeing it three or four times. You have to look at the movie very precisely to see it. European filmmaking has never been too interested in drive, but American film has always. I imported it into Dutch cinema.

Do you find it odd that critics and audiences often tend to change their minds about your films — in a more positive direction — after they've been out a couple of years?
Not anymore, because it happens all the time. It doesn't amaze me at all, and I always feel that history will put things right. Even when the Washington Post accused Starship Troopers of being a fascist movie, I thought "That's crazy." I didn't even think of writing a letter, because I thought it was really nonsense. I have a strong belief, perhaps naïvely, that after some time, my films will be seen in the right light. I still believe that even Showgirls will be.

Do you know that Jacques Rivette thinks it's a great film?
Yes, I read that. Some people were nice enough to send it over to me, because they knew what a bashing had been going on. It was mostly in the U.S. but also to a certain degree in Europe. I always felt that people were shocked because they were seeing something no one had done, but I also thought that in ten or fifteen years,

Showgirls

people would see the film more straightforwardly and understand what we tried to do. Later, I said to Joe Eszterhas that we could have made the same movie with fewer problems if it had been a murder mystery. It would be situated in Vegas, but one of the dancers gets killed. It would be the same film, but more like Basic Instinct. It's about exploitation of sexuality, but it was promoted as the most erotic movie of all time. In some ways, it's really anti-erotic.

I don't think that everything I do is always wonderful and perfect, but to answer your question, I'm not surprised by it anymore. It happened for the first time with Spetters, which was restored to dignity around 1995. Then people started to write about it, saying "It's not such a bad movie after all," but [originally] it was bashed worse than Showgirls. There was no positive word on radio, television, magazines, weeklies or monthlies for four or five months. It was hell on earth for me and for the actors. One article said "Perhaps you should look at it in a different way." That was the last anyone wrote about it until 1995. It happens. It's difficult to live with at the time. If I'm fine with it now, that's because I've gone through many crises when it happened for the first time. Ultimately, you're not so shocked anymore. When it happened with Spetters, I thought they saw a different movie than the one I made. There were many harsh and provocative things in the movie, like homosexual rape. Journalists will never tell you outright that they're shocked, but sometimes when they are, they write a bad review. They're supposed to be above that, but they can be shocked too.

Do you think there's any room for the kind of provocation you tried to do in Starship Troopers in American cinema anymore?
Yes, sure. Why not? There's still many elements in American society that warrant it.

Can it find an audience or even get made in Hollywood?
I think it's going to happen again. For the last four or five years, I would say no. As the Bush government moves out and a new one moves in, it might make things more open than the last ten years have been. I've seen some signs in the industry that it's possible, but I don't know what direction it will go.

There's enough reason to do a film like that if you look at the United States' foreign policies. But you have to know what the aftermath will be before you can get perspective on it. It's difficult to do that in the middle of things. You need a vision of the whole time. You couldn't have shot Lawrence of Arabia in the time that it happened. Sometimes you need distance. Television is inclined to jump on things immediately, but the transcendence of the situation is difficult to get. Works of art, in some way, aim at transcending reality. It might be a touch too early, but ultimately I think Americans will look at themselves and see with amazement what's happened to them. I'm very negative about American politics now, but not about the American people.

In the final scene, where Rachel appears on a kibbutz guarded by soldiers, did you intend any larger criticisms of Israel?
I just described a historical situation. I'm not trying to send a message. I want to leave that choice to the audience. I'm just describing a certain kind of reality. For me, the scene just says that it's the beginning of the Suez War. Rachel's problems will never stop. For a Jewish girl, going to Israel isn't going to solve all her problems. I didn't want to stop at the moment where she's found a new life and job. She's working as a teacher and has become part of the Israeli community. She has a new husband and very cute kids. In a Hollywood ending, she would be in paradise and everything would be okay. Historically, that's nonsense. Living in Israel, there will always be problems. I'm saying "Don't think that paradise exists." It's certainly not there. I doubt that in our generation, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be solved. In the last shot of the film, I wanted to indicate that she's still not safe. Safer but not safe.

Was the framing device in Israel always part of your conception of the film?
Since 2001. Before that, we had the framework, but it was seen from a Dutch point of view. The original framing device was the survivors, much older, at a street in the Hague named after Resistance heroes. They would be looking at the signs. That didn't leave any possibility for an ending, and I felt it was a bit flat. Once I talked to my old Dutch producer, who read the script but ultimately didn't do the movie, he said "That's a boring beginning." I wanted to find something that would really speak to people. That would be what happened to Rachel. The producers tried many times to seduce me not to do that scene in the first place. Not so much because of political reasons, just financial reasons. We stopped shooting in December 2005. The scene in Israel was shot in May and June 2006, after we begged them for the money to do it. Ultimately, they gave me the $300,000 that it cost.

You've treated the subject of fascism in three or four of your films. Have you exhausted everything you have to say about it?
No. Fascism is all around us. It's always visible in society, especially when you are living in a country with imperialist inclinations. We have to be aware of its danger. It's not simply German. Starship Troopers is creating a fascist utopia that's standing in for the United States. That was always the idea.

But it's set in Argentina.
Otherwise, it would be too obvious, so the screenwriter and I said "In the new world, they talk as American in Buenos Aires as in Dallas." In a cryptic way, we were talking about the United States, with references to gun control and executions of innocent people. It's not just based on Germany and Italy. I used fascist style and Leni Riefenstahl's imagery to point out that you cannot trust any culture. It's done in a playful way. We felt that Robert Heinlein's book was very militaristic and on the edge of fascism, which applied to the culture we were living in. It was made during the Clinton years, but the dangers were becoming visible. They've been very visible the past few years. We wanted to be an antidote to Heinlein's book. He believed in utopian militarism. We thought it was a possibility, but we were making notes against it.


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