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You know, say what you will about the extremes of
Paul Verhoeven's filmmaking - from
Showgirls to
Total Recall to
Basic Instinct to
Starship Troopers and beyond, the man has a flair for Sex & Violence, capitalized and inextricably linked - I maintain that he's one of the most talented men making movies today. If they're not always great - and I usually think they are great - they're always immensely watchable. Over the past couple of weeks I've been extremely happy to hear people bringing up his last feature, the totally satisfying
Black Book, in reference to Tarantino's
Inglourious Basterds - really anytime people recognize Verhoeven's mastery is a cause for celebration here though.
But when the mentions of
Black Book started (and man I have to watch that movie again, it's been awhile now), I realized I had Verhoeven's original WWII Dutch epic, 1977's
Soldier of Orange, laying around unseen as of yet, and I knew it was time to rectify. The film was blasphemously difficult to find and the copy I did get wasn't of pristine quality, which prompts a bit of outrage from me - what's the deal, world? This is an important film and a terrifically entertaining one at that; it really ought to be readily available. Get on this, Criterion!
Anyway
Soldier of Orange, like so many war films, tells the story of a group of friends and the various factions they're split into and how all of their lives are split apart and intersect again in strange ways over the course of the war. It's suspenseful and lush and epic and well-acted and funny and so on. A gem. But there were several scenes - especially one towards the end that I'm about to cap the shit out of - that reminded me of Paul Verhoeven's ever-lasting gay cred. Oh sure, he got a lot of shit for the evil lesbianism of
Basic Instinct and the camp tit-parade that was
Showgirls, but I think we, the world, have been remiss in giving his exploitation of the male homo-erotica short shrift. He's nothing if not an equal exploitationist! And I love him for it.
Because so many of his films, especially the early ones that I've seen, just lay bare this sexual fluidity in male friendships that's... well I hesitate to call it odd. I certainly appreciate it and enjoy it. And perhaps in Europe, where the early films of Verhoeven's were made and there are less sexual hang-up's than there are here in the US, male friendships are allowed a bit more of an erotic tension spilling over. Like, for example, in Verhoeven's 1980 film
Spetters, about three male best friends and their relationship with a woman that comes between them, there's a scene where the three friends
literally whip out their dicks, jerk them hard, and measure them against each other. Now... all male friends do that sort of thing, right? Mmmhmm. And I haven't even gotten into the male rape scene.
But I digress. I digress with too many words! Pictures! We want pictures! In
Soldier of Orange the main character out of the group of friends separated by the war is Erik, played by Rutger Hauer. He becomes a spy of sorts, bopping back and forth between Holland where he's grown up and London where he's escaped to. One of his old friends, Alex (
Derek de Lint), is German and once the Germans take over Holland becomes a member of the SS. Erik sneaks back into Holland on a mission and slips on a tux - he slips on a lot of lovely tuxes in this movie - to sneak into an SS dinner party... where he stumbles into his old friend Alex, who he hasn't seen since escaping to London. Much tension ensues! Will Erik be found out? Will his old friend betray him? And why not play out this scene by having the two men dance together, completely out-of-nowhere but incredibly hot?
I mean, why not, right?
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