Take It As Red

"Blogging is, by its very nature, erratic and irregular, feverish effort punctuated by random silence, a conundrum wrapped in a contradiction wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an unclosed em tag. " - The Poor Man

Thursday, February 17

 

Rotterdam Film Festival

Nice review by Dennis Lim in the Village Voice of the Rotterdam film festival. It's so annoying to be a short train-ride away and theoretically able to go, but to not be well enough to. Pah.




"There was also an unavoidable sense of nervous reflection to Rotterdam '05—the first large international arts event in a country still reeling from the assassination last November of filmmaker and political gadfly Theo van Gogh. For proof of how decisively the Dutch liberal dream has shattered, you needed to look no further than the metal detectors at the screening of van Gogh's final movie, 06/05, a speculative thriller about the murder (on May 6, 2002) of right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn. The festival had planned to show Submission, the Islam critique that cost van Gogh his life, but citing security concerns, pulled it at the last minute. (Part of the short, reviewed in these pages last November, is still available at ifilm.com.) A wheezy conspiracy clogged with broad and suspect characterizations, 06/05 connects Fortuyn's murder to a backroom effort involving the Dutch military and the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter program. 06/05 is now as much about its director's death as its subject's, and just as his hagiography offers a heroicized view of Fortuyn, van Gogh, who had a knack for provoking anger and not argument, is being eulogized as a free-speech hero. "


But for once a non-Dutch commentator is judging Van Gogh on what he did, rather then as some sort of icon for free speech. Now that's verfrissend.

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