ABSTRACT

The colonial history of the Netherlands was the subject in Rademakers’ adaptation of MAX HAVELAAR. Together with DE SCHORPIOEN, it is a clear example of a film that registers attempts to cover up a dreadful state of affairs. HET ZWIJGEN is centred around a local mystery on audiotape, whereas De bende VAN OSS shows how Catholics run a small-town community. These accounts of ‘historical discomfort’ will shift to ‘historical traumas’, with characters increasingly affected by gruesome events. This results in a protagonist's repressed childhood memory, as in DE AANSLAG, whereas a mother in LEEDVERMAAK is caught in a cycle of never-ending repetitions. In the case of CHARLOTTE, the protagonist's horrific life story can only be presented in cut-up fragments, addressed to a ‘beloved you’.

KEYWORDS

Historical discomfort and historical trauma – Aural temptations – Transgression of rules – Repressed memories – Past as eternal present

There is much to be said to the credit of Fons Rademakers’ courageous enterprise of MAX HAVELAAR (1976). To start with, it was nothing less than a bold ambition to adapt the all-time classical novel in Dutch literary history written by Multatuli in 1860. There were some obvious laments, voiced by those critics who took the novel as a point of reference: the focus on the dramatic events was necessarily at the expense of an attention to style, and the film was not as stratified as the book's polyphony might have required. Although Rademakers’ film lacked Multatuli's motivation to bring about a revolution, the attempt to shoot MAX HAVELAAR in the vein of a David Lean epic in Panavision was nonetheless daring for the standards of Dutch cinema: there was a reason that Max HAVELAAR with its budget of 6 million guilders was the most expensive Dutch film at the time. The film attracted 727,000 filmgoers in the Netherlands, but at least as important, MAX HAVELAAR won a few international awards such as the special Jury prize at the Teheran film festival and a Bodil Award for best European film.

Apart from a comparison between novel and film, as usual favouring the ‘original’, the film could possibly end up in a hornet's nest because Indonesians might suspect that a Dutch director would excuse the role of Dutch colonization, which was so critically discussed by Multatuli.