Director: Jop Emonts
Writer: Jop Emonts
Cast: Michael Tiedtke, Tara Ruby, Emil Szarkowicz, Jonatan Venema, Jan Linskens
Running time: 19mins
Christiaan Hesen is a folk figure from Limburg – a province in the south of the Netherlands. Unlike many folk figures, it seems fairly unambiguous that this individual existed – but like the rest, it’s clear that his legend grew ten times after his death in 1947.
Also known as ‘Rowwen Héze’, which is loosely translated from the local dialect as ‘Rough Hesen’, he lived in a village called America, apparently made of turf, and was famed for a terrifying appearance. After some kind of trauma, he is said to have removed his own eye – leaving the socket empty – while dressing in rags supposedly held together with iron wire. He wandered the area for decades, and allegedly has magical healing powers of some kind.
Almost none of this information makes it into writer-director Jop Emont’s film named after the man/legend. There is virtually no knowledge of Christiaan Hesen outside the Netherlands – and there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of knowledge about him in it either – yet Emonts hangs most of his narrative here on the assumption we know the original.
First, and most importantly, this is a problem because it makes it almost impossible for a general audience to draw parallels between the two tales – completely undermining the entire point of this re-telling. As far as I can work out, the original Christiaan Hesen blinded himself and began living as a ‘zwerver’ (a wandering homeless person, kind of like the US figure of the ‘hobo’) because he was abandoned by his wife and children. In Emonts’ film, meanwhile, we follow self-absorbed single-dad Michel (Michael Tiedtke), as he does his very best to follow in Rowwen Hézen’s footsteps.
Michel is an oaf. A dislikable and selfish man, who refuses to admit that he might need to improve in any way. Every day, he spends the majority of his time fruitlessly busking in the town’s streets. Nobody gives him any money, and he left a paying job in a kitchen to spend his time chasing a doomed dream of being a musician and actor. When he comes home late to his ramshackle apartment, where his daughter Anna (the affable Tara Ruby) is left alone and struggling, she asks him if he might go back to his old role for her sake – something he immediately writes off, even though she also tells him social services made another house-call.
Michel feels his fortunes may have changed when, after another day of penniless saxophone antics, he is handed the card of a director – who promises to make him “a nobody…a blank slate” into a star. Speaking to the auteur, Lee (the imposing Emil Szarkowicz), the next day, it does indeed seem that he has big plans for Michel (who he incessantly misnames ‘Mitchell’ through the stereotypical American drawl of a shady Hollywood producer).
The plan is for Michel to deploy a series of ground-breaking methods to produce a movie (Lee expressly states it will be a movie in his gloriously harsh accent) – with Michel dwelling in a mud-shack, herding goats, living 24/7 as Christiaan Hesen. Despite the project supposedly paying “a pretty penny”, Michel’s daughter is understandably nonplussed by the idea, and grows more distant from her neglectful father – his foibles presumably even more difficult to tolerate when underscored by the stench of fresh goat-stool.
You get the picture. Michel is becoming a living of echo of Christiaan Hesen, in this film called Christiaan Hesen. It’s not a million miles from The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, except done humourlessly, and without finding anyway to tie us emotionally to the characters before ill befalls them, and they complete an arc to become different characters in the conclusion. But this is just one-note. Michel is an oaf at the start, and he is an oaf at the end – and at no point does he seem conflicted in the way his behaviour impacts his daughter. I’d argue that’s not an ideal way of getting us to engage with themes and legends which we don’t really know in the first place.
But beyond that, there is a second big short-coming to talk about here. The absence of the original story from this narrative means Emonts fails to make full use of the best material at his disposal. Namely: Emil Szarkowicz. As Lee, he unapologetically steals the show at every opportunity – less chewing the scenery than swallowing it whole along with any other cast member in his periphery.
Considering the village in which the original Christiaan Hesen lived was called America, Szarkowicz giving us all the classic affectations of a shifty American producer could have been something flagged up and played with in a much more prominent manner. I presume it is an affectation, because admittedly Szarkowicz’s accent does come and go a little bit while he is speaking very fluent Dutch – but to have managed to put an American twang on Dutch at all and not skip a beat is still pretty impressive, and when it does ebb away, his booming, rich tones mean that we don’t really care. In fact, most audiences would probably like more of it. Specifically, it seems he would be the perfect person to narrate an abridged version of the Christiaan Hesen story for our benefit, to really help us understand what is at stake as the film heads toward what should be a sad and horrific conclusion.
As it is, Emonts does not manage to draw all the loose ends together in a way that is appropriately emotional impactful. It actually comes across as comedic, as Michel’s ogrish frame lumbers away through a nearby lettuce field, sans his left eye – Anna wondering why on Earth in an earlier scene she had thought of becoming an actor, just like him.
Perhaps there is potential for this cyclical story, but it would need a substantial rework in order to do so. As it currently exists, Christiaan Hesen’s story seems to present the best opportunity for a learning curve to Anna – watching her father circling the drain, trapped in a disaster of his own making, and resolving not to become a third chapter in this story after all. A similar story was told very effectively by Primo Wolf’s short Haru. But making this film into that would require us to spend substantially more time with Anna as a main character, to understand her hopes and dreams for her father and herself. That’s not this film. This film is about Michel. And Michel is an oaf.