De leeuw van Vlaanderen

I was so well surprised by this obscure film from Netherlands and taking place in the Middle Age. It is a medieval tale so gritty, accurate, bloody and not to be watched by kids in matinees. I have rarely seen a so realistic medieval tale, except of course Paul Verhoeven's FLESH AND BLOOD, and maybe a couple of others, all recent films. But in the eighties, there was not many of them. Very few indeed. It looks like a Mel Gibson's feature, bloody, and the most accurate.

De leeuw van Vlaanderen is a medieval movie about the Flemish resistance against the French invading armies in 1302. The Flemish peasants won the battle because of their courage and the helping hand of God, manifesting itself as a golden knight on the battlefield. A sort of Braveheart (1995), but without the skirts.

It could have been a good movie. But the director, actually a novelist who thinks he can direct, screwed it up BIG TIME, again. Everything is leading up to the battle, but the battle itself is poorly filmed. If you can't afford to put in hundreds of extras on the grass, you shouldn't use too much long shots. But concentrate on the dynamics of the battle. There were too many empty spaces, which made the whole thing look ridiculous. Even Monty Python in The Holy Grail (1975) was more convincing!

The rest of the movie is static and theatrical. The occasional bad acting sequences are followed by sequences of low dramatic value and pointless discussions, where you feel as a spectator the need to push the fast-forward button. Yes, thank God I didn't see this one in the theatre.

note: I am sorry if I kind of hinted that Hugo Claus is trying to be Ed Wood. Ed Wood is maybe the worst director, but has still something Hugo Claus will never have: PASSION.

I'll probably have to explain my comment summary a little for those people not living in Flanders, i'd say over 99.9 % of mankind. The so-called Battle of the Golden Spurs, dated the 11th of June 1302, was one of the armed conflicts between the king of France and his landlord, the Count of Flanders. Discussing the principles of early 14th-century feudalism at length would take us too far : let's just state that at numerous occasions, both parties would stress respectively their power & independence on the edge of a sword.

19th century novelist Hendrik Conscience turned this battle into a symbol of oppression of the Flemish people, telling a heroic and passionate story how the nobility & craftsmen from all over the land joined forces against twice as many opponents, simply stating : if we each kill two of them, there is no problem to speak of. Thanks to their courage, the muddy Groeningenkouter stream which hindered the French cavalry enormously & the mystical yet inspiring appearance of the captured nobleman Robert de Bethune as a knight dressed in golden armour, Flanders triumphed. (I will save you all that happened before, it's basically more patriotic heroism and more bloodshed in a black versus white portrayal that makes "the Patriot" look subtle.)

Conscience was one of the founding fathers of the so-called Flemish movement, pleading for recognition and respect for the Flemish language & culture in a Belgium that was dominated by French. Now, effective nationalism needs a heroic tale, and besides a short period of kicking the Spanish invaders, there was little to choose from. It is what you get when you are part of various empires for seven hundred years. In that perspective, De Leeuw van Vlaenderen is quite enjoyable, plus it kills a few hours.

Now, about the movie. It is very ambitious. It has Jan Decleir, our best actor ever in one of his best roles ever(as popular hero & resistance leader Jan Breydel - for the Americans : he always has that sarcastic Jack Nicholson thing going )a unique amount of genuine medieval locations & the best ... whatever. It does not have any French dialogue, while it's the second language in these parts for Christ's sake, and in either case we have very skilled actors in the French part of the country. It does not have great views; the historical settings are so tied up inside modern city centers the camera wringles itself to keep the cars out, though probably spotted some nevertheless. It does not have decent special effects, even for the mid-eighties, simultaneously with all that Friday the 13th-like gore : maybe arrows don't give up much blood in some places of the human body, but swords surely do. The acting feels rather artificial. And most of all, you cannot fake 90.000 men fighting a ferocious battle with about 1000 clowns running around on a field, leaving 5 yards minimum in between when not fighting or being dead. The shortage of manpower & effects screwing up the battle really screws up any credit one would have been willing to give the rest of the film. And if even Conscience did not consider the golden knight equals divine intervention in an empty harness to be credible, why should we ?

All together : if i might have 150 million dollars and some SFX crews to do a faithful adaption with some disembowlings this time.

Low budget doesn't have to mean a bad film but in this case it unfortunately does. Looks like a TV production, is (mostly) poorly acted and badly scripted, with only a passing attention to historical detail or any kind of accuracy. The subject matter deserves much better.

So the production values aren't great, but that wouldn't have been a problem if the screenplay had been any good.

I've read the novel (by Henri Conscience) on which this move was based, and in this case, again, the old cliché is true: the novel was better.

The screenwriter (by Hugo Claus, a prolific novelist, poet, and playwright) seems to make all the wrong choices. Imho this screenplay was one of the worst effort of the much-lauded author.

One of the main conflicts in the novel is the contrast between Jan Breydel, a violent butcher in every way, and Pieter Deconinck, a thoughtful strategist. Oddly enough, the screenplay makes almost nothing of this.

Central in the novel, is a love story (Machteld and Adolf). Granted, in the novel (published in 1834) it's a courtly and sentimental affair, but Claus the screenwriter chooses to leave it out.

So it you would condense the big novel this film was based on, you would probably concentrate on these two relatoinships. But Claus chooses to be an "artist", and the result is almost a confusing non-story. No contemporary Fleming would know what this is all about, and so he wouldn't care -- nor would anyone else care.

This is a shame, because the historic facts make a great story, and the novel has a great story, about the mightiest European state (France) trying to subdue one of the wealthiest regions of the world (Flanders) -- all this in the early 14th century.

The movie ends with the "Battle of the Golden Spurs", which is still commemerated in Flanders on the 11th july. This movie does not do it proud.

I hope that one day a capable screenwriter and ditto director will make this into a great movie.