Off Screen

I had high expectations of this movie, everybody in The Netherlands was shocked when they heard the news that a man took a building and the people in it hostage. Sometimes the movie is quite confusing you do not always know what is real, at the end it becomes clear. Probably the reason why the rating is so low. But it tells the story about the man who takes people hostage and how he comes to his act and justifies it. I think they did a great job in trying to tell the story behind this man. You even start feeling for this guy. I gave it a 7 out of 10. Go see it, it is worth it. Jeroen Krabbé was good as ever and I also liked Jan Decleir. Both are very good and experienced actors. Definitely no waste of time.

When watching the trailer I was amazed about the mediocre acting performances of the entire cast, save Jan Decleir... However, I did want to see the movie and went to Antwerp last weekend to find out if the acting was poor throughout the movie. Fortunately the story of somewhat deranged bus driver John Voerman explained my notion. This certainly is a good movie, worth watching a couple of times to make sure you grasped the true story: both in his personal affairs and hunt for the codes hidden in the black bars of widescreen television John regularly looses track of reality and his deluded mind alters the way things really are...

I'm very glad I did take the chance to see it, because it's definitely worth your time. 7,5/10

I saw this film screened at the 2006 Palm Springs International film Festival and Director Peter Kuipers was on hand to introduce the film and take Q&A after. This is an interesting film with two great acting performances by John Decleir and Jeroen Krabbé. The film begins with and is based on the true story of a 59 year old bus driver who was protesting the introduction by Phillips of widescreen TV's and resisting them as unnecessary technology being forced down the consumers throats. Armed and with a bomb in his briefcase he takes hostages in a building that Phillips had only temporarily been housed in and had moved out of six months before. The film then goes on to tell the fictional tale of the events that led the hostage taker to start a consumer guerrilla war by himself. Since the film is drawn from an actual event and then becomes fictitious you don't really know what is fiction and what is fact and what is real and what is imagined from the viewpoint of the central character and since the actual company name is used throughout the film it really throws you off. The real hostage taker who was identified by the Dutch press as only John R and in this movie as John Voerman, actually sent a communique about the reason for his actions that he was resisting "manipulation by sellers of widescreen television sets who were guilty of creative nonsense." Were he around today to see this film he might indeed find it as creative nonsense. I would rate this a 6.5 to a 7.0 on a scale of 10 and hope to view it someday on a widescreen TV.

During this hostage-taking I worked at a News Broadcast station here in Amsterdam, and I remember how this was not a cut-and-dry very angry (or worried) customer thing, it was all pretty weird, and almost seemed like a setup or joke. Many things were left unclear in this hostage-case. This made me curious about what this movie would tell us that could have lead to this.

Basically it seems the story is warning us about PHILIPS (or companies with similar powers), which makes it all the more strange; Would a company this huge let a movie like this hit the theaters and stores worldwide? Presuming that PHILIPS knew about the movie beforehand, does this mean at least some of the facts are actually true? Was this just a bus-driver regretting the fact that he never was anything more than a bus-driver? We are to think this is not the case, because he really loved his job. Did he or did he not know more than he should have known? The facts show that he must have been very intelligent. Would a guy like that do a thing like this for something as insignificant as widescreen TV or was there more? Are we to understand that this PHILIPS CEO was not his friend, and was not with him when he shot himself? Or did the police find out that the gun he was using was a gift from this PHILIPS man, and that he handed his (ex-)wife that other present because they had really met the way we see in this story? I can't really say how you could do this movie or tell this story any better, but the matrix-like views of flashing through time are a bit over the top, and don't do much good for the switches to and from the hostage-taking scene. The casting for the story is really outstanding though. Perfect actors for the jobs at hand.

The movie leaves you with lots of unanswered questions and it is a bit unsettling because nothing is going in a satisfactory direction. There's no hope or dream to be found here. It doesn't have a happy ending in any way, shape or form, and it is almost too much like real life; Harsh, without purpose, unfair and full of coincidences that remain unexplained. Not a fun movie to watch, but one that you will remember due to all the vague references to reality.

I have seen this movie, because I was curious about the way the fact of the hostage was being filmed and about Jan Decleir and Jeroen Krabbé working together. The film tells the story behind the hostage taker John V. He is lonely man living in his own world. He is product of our society. Wesselinck is a self made top manager and can afford everything. He gets to know John by coincidence ( or not ). John is writing letters to Philips because he suspects the multimedia company of putting encoded messages in 'widescreen'tv-sets. John is no longer seeing his wife and children and is a bus driver. In his spare time he writes letters to Philips and watches recorded tapes of a popular knowledge quiz. When he meets Wesselinck the top man, they become friends because they are alike. Wesselinck lets John in on a top secret project which has to do with manipulation. The film takes the audience behind the screens and only reveals at the end. All the time you think it's like this and in the end there is a complete turnaround! Superb! I happened to have an interview with Jan Decleir in Rotterdam last February and he told me the movie had been made in three weeks. The cast worked very hard and the result is a great movie! Go and see for yourself!