Sportman van de Eeuw

Sportsman of the century is a romantic drama about Teake Jongsma, a member of the Northern Dutch province Friesland (Fryslân). The guy is quite good in his department of sports: sitting at a pole. Teake rules this sport for about 60 years and is therefore selected to become sportsman of the century (of Fryslân, that is). The bad thing in his sports is the fact that matches can take up to 250 days. This messes up Teake's personal life, because he (poor) is fighting for one girl with another man (a rich guy named Rintje). I think the brand of sport chosen for this picture is quite original. Juchum ten Haaf is a charming sportsman, sitting high on his pole. These scenes are the cool ones in the movie. The rest (the romantic drama) is quite poor. The story is flat and contains holes, the actions of Rintje are very predictable. It's a pity, because sitting on a pole is very cool in this picture.

Although interesting in concept and shot beautifully, exactly why everybody goes nuts for a ten-year old winning a butt-numb-a-thon is a complete mystery to me. As this is crucial to the development of the story, everything that happens after that feels too far-fetched to get the reaction the filmmakers obviously had in mind.

Constructed in a flash-back story mode, the movie kicks off with the message that the main character has spent sixty years of his life devoted to the well-being of his fellow man. What follows is the story of a man who ignores the pleas for help of his father and wife to be, and as his motivations for spending week after week sitting on a pole are never quite explained properly, you loose interest in the main character rather than getting close to him.

Good cast, nice acting, but all in all too unbelievable to keep focused on for almost two hours.