Mysteries

The stranger in a small town looking for love ? It seems strange and the story does not make too much sense to me. Clearly a mystery. Other than that there is a sense of eroticism. Very light.

This is a fascinating little film. It is based on a Knut Hamsun novel. It stars Rutger Hauer as an enigmatic agronomist who finds himself in a small town near the ocean. It has a truly European flavor. He is long on ambition and very lonely. He becomes a puzzle to the people in the town, despised by some. He befriends a midget, whom the locals actually call "Midget." He falls in love with a vain woman who rejects him and manipulates. He falls back on an older woman who lives in a hovel on the side of a hill. He seems desperate, but he is so darned weird and so full of mysteries that no one can really figure him out. He is obviously despairing of a previous life and can't seem to move ahead. He is very strong and self centered in some respects; yet, he is fragile and self destructive in others. The midget is his true friend and we find out that he has great sympathy for his plight (he is ill treated daily by the villagers), yet we find him, at times, almost as cruel as the townspeople. He becomes angry at the midget because he doesn't stand up for himself, yet he is totally closed up himself. The strength and the weakness of the film is our lack of concrete connection to the man. He is likable at times and so irrational at others. It's a film well worth watching. It was filmed on the Isle of Mann which adds to its mysterious nature.

of a wonderful book. Rutger Hauer is at his best. The only thing that puzzled me was the ending, I did not understand the need to change the original ending of the book, it just doesn't make sense.

This film is very rare to find, but not the book, so if you want to read a masterpiece, here's your chance.

In MYSTERIES, agronomist, Johan Nagel (Rutger Hauer) arrives in a small, seaside town where he befriends a small man (David Rappaport), whom the townsfolk seem hellbent on humiliating and otherwise tormenting, until Nagel intervenes.

Nagel spends much of his spare time walking around in the world's largest fur coat. He also enjoys checking out the local female population.

A bit of an enigma, Nagel is kind one minute, and biting someone, or poisoning their dog the next!

This is a stunningly slow movie. While many films of its era are rather slow moving, this one appears to subvert time itself, actually running backward in many spots!

Hauer isn't really the problem, and he somehow keeps his dignity intact throughout this interminable affair. His character is fairly interesting in a bizarre, looney sort of way. However, anyone expecting a true story line, action, or even a pulse from this movie had better steer clear!

Punctuated by Rappaport's voice-over narration and sudden, inexplicable nudity, MYSTERIES has no real reason to exist, other than to offer Hauer an excuse to stroll about in his grizzly bear coat...

This is one of several early Hauer flicks which wound up on video in the mid eighties (1984, here) stateside. This one is near impossible to locate and it is not worth the effort. The bassy almost incomprehensible dubbing accounts for much of this. But the plot is murky too. Hauer seems to be moping over a lost lover. If this film was meant to exploiut Hauer's fame, it failed miserably. Whatever the film makers intent, it doesn't translate well stateside (regrettably). A lot of sex and flashbacks afoot.