Une noble intention

Based on a fictional Dutch book speculating on how the two 19th century homes that the Victoria Hotel was built around came to be. Amsterdam's Central Station is directly across the street from the Victoria Hotel, which was built in the late 1880's. If you look closely at the hotel you will notice that there are two single dwellings that the hotel was built around. This is the story of how that came to be and it involves three cousins and the attempt to help some poor peat farmers achieve a better life in America.

This is a very sad but well meaning drama. The letter from the peat farmers really saved this from being a total tragedy. I loved the images of the hotel then and the hotel now.

It is the precursor to my city's Up house (which sadly I witnessed the monstrous fitness center, etc being built around a poor old lady's home here in Seattle ), with the exception that in the modern build they made no attempt to make the building beautiful and the owner wasn't holding out for more money...she just wanted to live in peace in her home.

Despite an expensive production, the narrative is unconvincing. "Value of location" is one of the main topics of the film. Nonetheless, the film does not give the viewer a sense of place.

The choice and ordering of scenes undermine any tension to be build up. The different story lines do not support, but destroy each other. Important changes in the plot are not properly introduced or visually translated. As a result the gradual emotional breakdown of the violin maker, one of the main characters, is not convincing. The end scene of the doctor, the other main character, is so ridiculous and pathetic that it melts down the entire Hoogeveen storyline. Vital themes such as social injustice, or the arrival of modernity are treated as interchangeable backdrop. A relevant storyline is lacking.

By result the causality of the narrative breaks down and all events become arbitrary.

Pretty frustrating, as Rosenboom's success novel must have had all layers in place. A film can never be as rich as a novel, but a film must present those strings that contain the story. That is unfortunately not the case here.

Great movie!! My favorite part is when, at a funeral, you see a graveyard worker pulling a blanket from a caskit. Why i like this part so much you ask? Well maybe the fact that the person acting as graveyard worker is ME. But it's not a bad movie in general but not for brood audience cause it's a historical drama.

Very irritating: the diction of the actors, especially their accents, which is typical of people working for national radio and TV in the Netherlands. "Bekakt Goois". In Hoogeveen.

What a sad movie, I sincerely hope it's just fiction, so much suffering, all in favor of a greater good that didn't come true (or did, the totally appropriate translation, rare thing, "A Noble Intent", the script, the story in itself is filled with good intentions, altruistic people, who for their good ambitions, fail, reconstruction of phenomenal historical photography... Beautiful and sad, violence and kindness...