One year ago, Congress defunded public media. Now that we're 100% community funded, please become a sustaining member or increase your existing membership today.
This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
'Borgman': A Murderous Black Comedy About The Sick Soul Of Europe
A naked Borgman (Jan Bijvoet) crouches over Marina (Hadewych Minis) as she sleeps in 'Borgman'. (Courtesy of Drafthouse Films)
So long as there exists a moderately-wealthy middle class in Europe, then European arthouse directors—from Federico Fellini up through to Michael Haneke—will always have a punching bag to pick on in their long tradition of depicting the sickened soul of Europe. "Quo vadis, Europa?" asked an intertitle from Jean Luc-Godard's Film Socialisme, one of the most recent works from one of the standard-bearers of this tradition. Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam's latest, Borgman, is a black comedy take on the ailing heart of the Continent. It borrows from its contemporaries Haneke and Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth in its heavily mannered yet absurdist scenario of the downfall of a rich family at the hands of mysterious forces.
Borgman opens with a thrill when shaggy men who live in underground nests in the forest are smoked out and chased after by a hunting party of mercenaries and a shotgun-wielding priest. One of these men, who we later discover to be the titular Borgman (Jan Bijvoet), takes refuge in the quiet, bucolic petit bourgeois home of the van Schendels whose matriarch (Hadewych Minis) finds sympathy in the downtrodden man. Reasonably wealthy but apparently dead inside, the house itself resembles a giant concrete sarcophagus.
The arrival of Borgman and the rest of his cadres begins to unravel the van Schendel family. Motivated for no other reason other than fulfilling the film's need of pitting individuals who are literally underfoot against the privileged elites, Borgman is steeped far too heavily in allegory at times. A few victims, who had the misfortune of simply being in the way, suffer the ultimate indignity of having their bodies disposed of in a pond, upended with their heads—instead of their feet—encased in concrete. However, Borgman allows itself to be less suffocating than Haneke's work, depicting its meticulously planned, Mouse Trap-like murders in a blackly comic manner. At its highs, Borgman becomes a bizarre, realist cinematic representation of an Edward Gorey drawing. Just don't mind its silly politics.
Borgman opens today at the Nuart Theatre in West L.A.
One year ago, Congress voted to defund public media, eliminating a critical $1.7 million from our budget every year going forward. But they couldn’t silence us, and we’re not going anywhere. LAist is now 100% community funded and that means we’re taking our future into our own hands and turning to you to keep local reporting strong.
You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
Senior Vice President News, Editor in Chief
