Soldaat van Oranje

SOLDIER OF ORANGE is a film about a group of friends who encounter the occupation of Holland by the Germans in different ways. The film splits up it's time dealing with the stories of the friends and that of one of them who becomes a high ranking member of the OSS and close political ally to the queen of Holland. The film, set during WW2, is even handed in it's approach. SOLDIER OF ORANGE is a unusual film and was made with a high degree of quality. The film goes for a sense of realism not often seen in cinema, the film,made in Holland is in dutch yet in the sequences in england it is in English. I recommend this film to WW2 buffs and fans of art-house cinema alike. Both groups will be pleased as will foreign film fans who can be assured of finding something worthwhile.

Based on true events, the film provides a wide temporal overview of different destinies students of different ethnicities and background had to face during World War II. This big war ruined lots of relations and comprehensions, but unlike in Eastern-European countries, occupation and its consequences remained relatively short-time, and the confrontation was still on the so-called centre/right level. For example, fate of the Baltic nations was even more tragic and disruptive...

Anyway, the film in question is well written, directed and played; names like Paul Verhoeven, Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbé are currently internationally known and appraised, before that they were active mostly in the local scene. Hauer and Krabbé are real character actors, having also distinctive appearance, not just cute face / gleaming smile so characteristic to many US counterparts. On the other hand, if necessary, they are also talented team players, merging well with background and co-performers; the latter are also strong and even, and the Brits and Germans are played by respective native-speakers.

A powerful film, recommended to all those fond of war dramas.

Paul Verhoeven's Soldaat van Oranje (aka: Soldier Of Orange), the religious excesses of his Flesh + Blood (1985) not withstanding, is probably the closest the director has come to an epic. At the equivalent of $2.5 million, it was the most expensive Dutch feature film made at that time. It was also the film which brought him to the attention of Hollywood, exemplified by Spielberg's phone call to him after seeing the film: "What are you doing in Holland? Come to the USA, things are better there!"

During his childhood in The Hague, Verhoeven had been witness to the activities of the occupying Nazis, which made a great impression on him. He remembers vividly his father hiding in a cellar and seeing dead bodies in the street, for example. As one biographer has noted, Soldier Of Orange "was a theme he could taste, feel, and breathe," a film shot with of honesty and verisimilitude, if less of the director's characteristic excess, though still with his distinctive vision and style. There are some familiar faces in the large cast: Jeroen Krabbé (as Guus Le Jeune) who took the lead in De Vierde Man (aka: The Fourth Man) is a key protagonist, and the svelte and good-looking Rutger Hauer, as the central character Erik Lanshof. The blond Hauer, who had until now been utilised by Verhoeven as a working class hero in such films as Turks Fruit (aka: Turkish Delight, 1973), and afterwards in Spetters (1980) is here transformed into a prosperous war hero, modelled on Erik Roelfzema, the author of the original dramatic memoir. Much of the fraught virility usually associated with Hauer is suppressed here, although it briefly reappears during his dalliance with Susan (Susan Penhaligon).

That Erik/Hauer is the focus of the film is suggested by his first appearance, although the episodic nature of much that follows in the narrative sometimes sidelines his significance. He is inserted, Zelig-like, into opening newsreel footage, the 'single aide' at the post war return of Queen Wilhemina. Like so many of his Dutch contemporaries, Erik is comfortably well off, a man to whom (if only at first) the conflict seems just another grand adventure. Previously the middle class had been presented in Verhoeven's work as exploiters (as in Keetje Keeple, 1975) or as sexually ludicrous in Wat Zen Ik? (aka: Business Is Business, 1971). Such boisterous social irony is, in the present film, conspicuous by its absence, as if the contemplation of war forced a different responsibility upon the filmmakers. Erik and his class of 1939-40 may sometimes be made effete, but never risible. Made at a time when Netherlanders were starting to face the realities of their wartime existence, unpleasant facts about home collaboration and acquiescence to occupation, Verhoeven's film confronts these issues with a tale of student friends torn apart by war, having to face moral dilemmas and choices. Soldier Of Orange, complete with its stirring title music, is a title with a singular subject, implying a monolithic view of an individual at war. But the film actually focuses on a plurality of men, an ensemble of half a dozen privileged students, each of them responding to the conflict in a different way. Although Erik is the nominal hero, his actions are often ineffectual and have dubious results. His counterweight is Alex (Derek de Lint). Having served in the Dutch army, he sees his mother interned and decides to join the Waffen SS. The two meet only twice after: at a parade, where the Dutch civilians give flowers to the Germans, and at a dance where the two tango face to face, with obvious connotations of identity and mutual resemblance. Of the other friends, Robby (Eddie Habbema) betrays his colleagues to save his girlfriend, while another stays out of it entirely - one of only two surviving out of the initial group picture.

Soldier Of Orange begins, aptly enough, with an initiation ceremony. Cowed, humiliated, then celebratory, Erik and the others have to undergo rituals to be accepted into the student body. Of course the mocking cruelties they undergo echo the Nazi repression of later on: the fear, the anal torture and the firing squads. More immediately the process confirms for us the circle of friends, frozen in a group photograph, set to be tested further as what begins as a student's club ends as a man's struggle. This opening initiation is the coming conflict in microcosm. Soon it will be the flames of war, rather than the soup comically poured over Erik's head, that offer a definitive rite of passage. Verhoeven manages some exciting set pieces during the course of the film: the bombing attack on the barracks, the beach shootings scene, the initiation and the aborted seaplane rescue being standouts. There are also some quieter, poetic moments, such as the overhead and point-of-view shots of Jean's white shirted execution in the dunes. (A striking scene which makes one regret Verhoeven's recent descent into the special effects laden un-subtlety of the Hollow Man.) The episodic nature of the narrative is both a blessing and a curse: while the number of characters and subplots makes it possible to examine a society from a range of viewpoints, the lack of a single, strong momentum leads to occasional slacking of tension.

The abiding impression gained at the end of this long (167 minutes) film is that nothing in this war has been black and white, and Verhoeven has faithfully suggested the historical revisionism of the time. Out of these moral uncertainties, he has crafted an exciting and engrossing work, one that he now considers his best Dutch project. Although the ambiguities helped make Soldier of Orange's initial critical reception lukewarm, it was exceptionally well received by the Dutch public. Interestingly, for overseas release the film was renamed Survival Run - a change that suggests a work much less of a complex national portrait than it actually is.

Soldaat van Oranje is Paul Verhoeven's war movie, one that already shows his early leaning towards grungy realism - graphic torture, debased human nature and plenty of bare boobies - which is why it had a pretty mixed reception when it came out here in Holland.

This story is told from the point of view of a number of well to do Leiden University students. For clarification, very few people before the war had the finances to go to university.

Highlighting some now internationally famous Dutch actors - Rutger Hauer, Derek de Lint, Jeroen Krabbé as well as locally known actors like Belinda Meuldijk, Rijk de Gooyer and this is also a showcase of acting talent during the seventies and early eighties. British seventies actors Susan Penhaligon and Edward Fox (A Bridge Too Far) also have interesting performances.

Based on the memoirs of Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (Erik Lanshof in the movie), this is a reasonably realistic and truthful recounting of war and resistance during world war two. Roelfzema, a genuine war hero, first joined the student resistance, then the SOE, then joined the RAF and finally became an adjudant (aide) to queen Wilhelmina. He is still spritely and alive, living in Hawaii with his English wife.

It is also pretty unique as it features what must be cinema's first and only drive-by-shooting from a bicycle. And one with wooden tires at that. And a great yarn too. It has heroism and cowardice, loyalty and betrayal, relativism, principles and pragmatism. Recommended.

This film hit a grand slam by successfully achieving all of the things I hope for in a movie: it entertained me, it educated me, it charmed me, and it provoked me. I have lived in the Netherlands and love the Dutch people, so I was happy to view this film and see many familiar sites and understand some of the Dutch dialogue. It provided me with a sense of deja vu. I also learned things about the Dutch World War II experience that I previously was unaware of. The vast majority of the world only has one thought when it comes to WWII and the Dutch: Anne Frank. It's heartening to watch a film that explores many other facets of the Dutch experience during occupation, and that doesn't promote an all-rosy view wherein everyone is heroic. It is a realistic film that showed the complications of war and occupation, the desire for self-survival, the limits of patriotism, the fragility of war-time romances, and the bravery and sacrifices that some, but not all, are willing to exhibit. My heart was in my throat many times as I wondered what would happen and, although the movie is almost two and a half hours, I was sorry to see it end.