Off Screen

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.

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

This simply is a great movie! I voted 9 out of 10. It shows that it's possible, even in the Netherlands, to make intelligent movies about actual topics or events. For ages the only themes in serious Dutch films were the Second World War and sex. Luckily this is changing now. For instance last year we saw the comedy "Shouf Shouf Habibi" about the problems of immigrants from Marocco in Holland, and the murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh made "05/ 06" about the murder of the politician Pim Fortuyn. "Off Screen" is also based on true events. Two years ago a confused man (a bus driver) took hostages in an office building because he wanted to speak to the top executive of Philips Electronics, about the introduction of widescreen television. He thought this was one big scam, and that the consumers were mislead, because in Holland there are hardly any broadcasts in the widescreen format. (In fact he was right of course!) It was a bit of a sad event, because just a few days before the Philips offices were moved to an adjourning office building. It ended with the confused man committing suicide. The film was made on a very small budged, but that's hardly visible. The film focuses on the life of the divorced bus driver. It shows the psychological process and the supposed encounters he had with the Philips executive that led to his actions. I say supposed encounters, because the best thing about the film is that it never becomes exactly clear what's real, and what's not. Did things really happen, or is it all just in the mind of the bus driver? In this aspect the film reminded me of films like "Swimming Pool" (Francois Ozon), "Als Twee Druppels Water" (Fons Rademakers), or even "Big Fish" (Tim Burton), "The Usual Suspects" (Brain Singer) and "Fight Club" (David Fincher). The two main actors are absolutely great! In their separate scenes, but also in their scenes together there is a real chemistry. The Belgian actor Jan Decleir (as the bus driver) is always good. Jeroen Krabbé (as the Philips executive) has made great movies, but also a few awful ones. Here he shows he still is a one of Holland's best actors. Let there be made more intriguing movies like this, and let there be less money wasted on big budget productions (to Dutch standards that is) like the recent turkey "Floris". And let Paul Verhoeven finally make the definitive and absolutely last Dutch movie about WW II, the long awaited "Zwartboek"!

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!

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.