captain-howdy

And so Jan Verheyen is back for more, after a first movie and a tv-series about a group of friends who play football together while facing the challenges of supporting a family and becoming parents.

The plotlines are pretty believable in and of themselves: one of the central couples in the movie turn out to be barren en therefore try to adopt a child, only to be hindered at every turn by a sneaky little bureaucrat. One of the other members of the football team has a problem with his girlfriend performing as a stripper. Yet another one becomes father to triplets, one of them is blackmailed out of a promotion at work etc... You can almost conceivably imagine these things to happen in real life.

But the problem with this movie is that on the one hand, it wants to talk about problems that real people face (not being able to have children, trouble at work, depression after having a baby, feeling like life is closing in all around you after becoming a parent etc...), but on the other hand, it also wants to be a feel good-movie. And that means that no matter what, the script has to bend over backwards if necessary to get to a happy ending. Every problem must be resolved, every tear needs to be turned into a smile before the credits roll. And I'm afraid it'll be painfully obvious to anyone over the age of twelve that life just isn't like that. The movie tries to have it both ways, and the result is a story that ends up losing all credibility it might have had at one point.

Also, it must be said that the product placement was strong in this one. At two points in the movie, the story is essentially just stopped in order for one of the characters to shamelessly advertise a Belgian internet provider. I mean, having the main characters wear the logo of this company on their uniforms is one thing (what do we care, after all?), but basically interrupting the story for a commercial, like they would on tv? Come on!

I think that part of the problem is that Jan Verheyen, this movie's director and co-writer, is a great producer, but not much of a writer or director. He knows how to sell a product, he knows how to edit a movie so that it'll flash by in what seems like a second, but he simply doesn't know a good story, nor do I think he cares much, as long as he's able to produce something that's just slick enough to appeal to an audience of popcorn-eating teenagers. Somewhere beneath the charicatures that populate this story (Axel Daeseleire and Tania Kloek play two people who are described as "belonging to a lower social class" and do this with all the vulgarity and condescension the cliché image of such people demands), there actually might be a decent movie waiting to be found. A lot of these characters are interesting, have some appeal at least, and some of the basic storythreads deserve to be fleshed out more in a movie that's not afraid to sell you something that doesn't smack of a mega-happy ending.

Looking at some of the other comments here, I am as ever amazed at how much we Belgians like to keep ourselves down. God forbid a movie made within our borders should have a visual scheme in which the camera actually moves, or a plotline that doesn't wrap everything up neatly in 90 minutes. The plot for Tom Barman's directing debut certainly doesn't do that, it just goes... well... any way the wind blows.

We follow the lives of about ten people in the city of Antwerp over a period of about 36 hours. We follow stories of loves lost, attempts at succes that failed, illusions long gone. All of the people that inhabit this movie seem to be looking for something, anything that would give their lives a sense of direction. If the movie seems aimless or unco-ordinated, that's because their lives are.

Barman made a stilistically marvelous movie here, with an incredible soundtrack (even the film's detractors have to admit that much) and a very energetic visual stile. This is probably the first time that a Flemish movie has used a steadycam so often and to such great effect. Anyone who even remotely knows the city of Antwerp, will understand that AWTWB is first and foremost a loveletter to the city, which is lovingly rendered, not only in the images, but also in the characters, who talk in a way that absolutely rang true to me. Barman also gleefully shows off his knowledge of other movies by working in hommages to filmmakers like Godard, Woody Allen, Brian De Palma et al.

Yes, it's true, the movie is too long by about fifteen minutes and I, too, was looking for a sort of unifying theme that would wrap everything together. But ultimately, who cares? This is a very energetic, lively film that's enormously entertaining and does contain some insightful moments. Look at a scene in which a French teacher reads a piece by Kundera to his bewildered class. One of the kids tells him she didn't understand everything in the piece. "Did you enjoy it?," the teacher asks. She answers yes. "Well, that's fine then." The same holds true for this movie - there may be loose strands, but then there are loose strands in life, and it's not necessary to understand everything in order to enjoy it.

It may be style over substance - it probably is - but at least here's a man who's not afraid to make a stylish movie in the first place. Barman takes some chances here, he's ambitious, he's bold, he's going for a big show that has something for everyone - and even if he doesn't quite have enough to make it all click together perfectly, it's still a remarkable effort, that deserves applause.

I'd much prefer a filmmaker who goes for something extraordinary and scores a very, very near miss, like Barman here, than someone who simply aims for the same stuffy old clichés and the same predictable stilistical tics we've seen countless times before (as in the vastly overrated Pauline & Paulette, a movie that faked its way into convincing its audience it was actually about something).

AWTWB was a very successful movie here in Belgium, and if there's one thing no one will ever forgive you, it's success. As soon as people actually go see a movie and have a good time, apparantly, it can't possibly be any good. When Robert Altman or PT Anderson make movies like this, in which different storylines intersect and sometimes but not always congeal into a coherent whole, everyone applauds the way they break with conventional storytelling. When Barman does it, they look down their noses at it and call it a mess "that's not about anything." True, Barman does not yet have the emotional or narrative punch that these American examples have, but the talent is definitely there, and let's not forget, it is a first movie after all. No, I'm not a dEUS-fan, and AWTWB was really a first proper introduction for me to Tom Barman and his work. Again responding to some of the other comments here, I get the impression a lot of people dislike the director because of what he did in the music business or his supposed arrogance or pretention. I really don't care if he's the most arrogant man who ever lived - he did make a good film.