I'm not sure if this review will contain 'real' spoilers. It will contain a possible insight that I didn't think of beforehand. But it's something I feel is essential to talk about while reviewing this work of art.
Don't get me wrong, I won't really 'spoiler'. It will just add my personal perspective which you normally only develop slowly in a huge ride of confusion, but hearing of this beforehand might actually help you to 'feel' the movie better. It won't make the movie much more 'concrete', it will still be a ride of confusion, your own little puzzle, because it's meant that way. This here is just my personal insight, essential for this review, yet it is up to yourself to decide if you want to read this.
Borgman...
I visited this movie not knowing what to expect at all. I had always been intrigued by Warmerdam's earlier work. The lovely collage of characters he always paints for us. Their quirks, their failures, their personal mistakes, their confrontations and egos. The dark and harsh realism of the characters and their lives is deeply compelling to me. Soon I found that I missed this in Borgman. I didn't know why, but the characters seemed disconnected, outlandish with dialogs of grotesque and epic stature. I felt I was watching a bad play in which nothing really connected. In retrospect this makes sense, yet it still irks me in some way. The disconnection seems a little too forced for my liking, making the already bizarre world and setting of the movie a suddenly distant whisper instead of a compelling yet confusing conversation.
But that is about the only problem I had. This disconnection serves a purpose.
This movie is highly symbolical. I never analyze movies in a dramatic way, yet this one at first made me feel I did. I thought I was maybe taking it too far, but in the end I really don't think so.
What are we watching? You'll probably wonder about this right until the end. There really is no moral judgment on what happens here and that will leave you in a state of confusion. You may think there is, but think again afterward.
This is a case of good versus evil. About religion, about demons, about hate, about the devil, about tainted souls. Good versus evil can be interpreted in many ways of course. As for me, the movie made me interpret this in a very folkloric Christian way. The movie even starts of with a priest aggressively chasing after our main character. That is the bluntest statement in the movie, and it even opens up with it. It doesn't end there though. Not forcibly, but this time more subtle the movie hints us towards religious statements, comparisons, reminders, and folkloric tales of nightmare and death.
This family we see. Are they good? They are rich, seem the perfect family, they're successful in many ways. But are they really? Then Borgman comes along, the vagrant. Dirty, hunted down. He psychology messes with the family's life. Is he evil?
I ask these questions because in retrospect it is hard to feel bad for this family. It is hard to not laugh at what Borgman does to them. We laugh as if it's all a bad play. We feel disconnected from them. If we really feel Borgman is evil, than why do we laugh at his victims demise? Why aren't we horrified?
The dialog which I mentioned earlier certainly serves as a tool to further develop a disconnection between us and the family. It also serves as a symbolic reminder of what is really going on here, and in it's grotesqueness it's also a reminder of the biblical proportions of the subject good versus evil.
I certainly love how Warmerdam seems to play with symbols here. How he hints and teases, but never really plainly reveals. How he tries to influence our minds to connect to characters a certain way.
In the end, I do not know what was good and what was evil. Maybe this whole movie was about making the world a less corrupted place, albeit in a very unconventional way. But then again, maybe this is simply about evil feeding of us and dragging us in, harvesting the mistakes we make in our lives, feeding of the hatred we feel in our hearts and towards each other.
But can we really say who was good or evil here? This movie will make you feel you know what happened, but did you really? Will you also remember how you laughed at the most horrible moments and how you felt disconnected at the better times? Is this family really any good? Do you even like them at all? Maybe they are the most corrupted characters in this whole movie?
This movie will make you think and think, over and over again. I highly admire Warmerdam's ability to play on us and make us react in the exact opposite way we normally would. We are being played here. We are being served our own mental dilemma.
Don't get me wrong, I won't really 'spoiler'. It will just add my personal perspective which you normally only develop slowly in a huge ride of confusion, but hearing of this beforehand might actually help you to 'feel' the movie better. It won't make the movie much more 'concrete', it will still be a ride of confusion, your own little puzzle, because it's meant that way. This here is just my personal insight, essential for this review, yet it is up to yourself to decide if you want to read this.
Borgman...
I visited this movie not knowing what to expect at all. I had always been intrigued by Warmerdam's earlier work. The lovely collage of characters he always paints for us. Their quirks, their failures, their personal mistakes, their confrontations and egos. The dark and harsh realism of the characters and their lives is deeply compelling to me. Soon I found that I missed this in Borgman. I didn't know why, but the characters seemed disconnected, outlandish with dialogs of grotesque and epic stature. I felt I was watching a bad play in which nothing really connected. In retrospect this makes sense, yet it still irks me in some way. The disconnection seems a little too forced for my liking, making the already bizarre world and setting of the movie a suddenly distant whisper instead of a compelling yet confusing conversation.
But that is about the only problem I had. This disconnection serves a purpose.
This movie is highly symbolical. I never analyze movies in a dramatic way, yet this one at first made me feel I did. I thought I was maybe taking it too far, but in the end I really don't think so.
What are we watching? You'll probably wonder about this right until the end. There really is no moral judgment on what happens here and that will leave you in a state of confusion. You may think there is, but think again afterward.
This is a case of good versus evil. About religion, about demons, about hate, about the devil, about tainted souls. Good versus evil can be interpreted in many ways of course. As for me, the movie made me interpret this in a very folkloric Christian way. The movie even starts of with a priest aggressively chasing after our main character. That is the bluntest statement in the movie, and it even opens up with it. It doesn't end there though. Not forcibly, but this time more subtle the movie hints us towards religious statements, comparisons, reminders, and folkloric tales of nightmare and death.
This family we see. Are they good? They are rich, seem the perfect family, they're successful in many ways. But are they really? Then Borgman comes along, the vagrant. Dirty, hunted down. He psychology messes with the family's life. Is he evil?
I ask these questions because in retrospect it is hard to feel bad for this family. It is hard to not laugh at what Borgman does to them. We laugh as if it's all a bad play. We feel disconnected from them. If we really feel Borgman is evil, than why do we laugh at his victims demise? Why aren't we horrified?
The dialog which I mentioned earlier certainly serves as a tool to further develop a disconnection between us and the family. It also serves as a symbolic reminder of what is really going on here, and in it's grotesqueness it's also a reminder of the biblical proportions of the subject good versus evil.
I certainly love how Warmerdam seems to play with symbols here. How he hints and teases, but never really plainly reveals. How he tries to influence our minds to connect to characters a certain way.
In the end, I do not know what was good and what was evil. Maybe this whole movie was about making the world a less corrupted place, albeit in a very unconventional way. But then again, maybe this is simply about evil feeding of us and dragging us in, harvesting the mistakes we make in our lives, feeding of the hatred we feel in our hearts and towards each other.
But can we really say who was good or evil here? This movie will make you feel you know what happened, but did you really? Will you also remember how you laughed at the most horrible moments and how you felt disconnected at the better times? Is this family really any good? Do you even like them at all? Maybe they are the most corrupted characters in this whole movie?
This movie will make you think and think, over and over again. I highly admire Warmerdam's ability to play on us and make us react in the exact opposite way we normally would. We are being played here. We are being served our own mental dilemma.