An Academic Assault

The Assault

Written by Gerard Soeteman

Directed by Fons Rademakers

At the USA Nickelodeon

THE ASSAULT WAS THIS YEAR'S Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film, and it's not hard to see why. It was no doubt less offensive to the sensibilities of the Academy than was its closest competitor, the sex-and-violence laden Betty Blue, yet it is a daring, disturbing, well-crafted film.

Based on Dutch author Harry Mulisch's novel, The Assault is the story of a Dutch man's coming to grips with history and his own past. As a 12-year-old boy in early 1945, Anton Steenwijk (Marc van Uchelen) lives under the shadow of the Nazi occupation of Haarlem. Despite the food and fuel shortages, the almost-defeated Nazis have a minimal effect on the lives of the Steenwijk family, who try to evade history by translating Homer, reading Spinoza, and playing board games.

But Anton's illusions are shattered when a Nazi collaborator is assassinated in front of the house next door, and the neighbors move the body in front of the Steenwijk house to avoid the Nazis' wrath. Within the hour, in fact, the Nazis have burned down Anton's house, slaughtered his family, and thrown him in jail.

In the dark cell, Anton meets a woman from the Resistance who has been wounded. She kisses his forehead to comfort him, unwittingly smearing him with blood and lipstick. Anton is released the next day to his surviving relatives in Amsterdam, but in a sense, he never completely washes away the blood and lipstick, as hard as he tries.

The adult Anton (Derek de Lint) tries to bury his past and his feelings. Tellingly, he becomes an anaesthetist. But history keeps intruding upon his life. The Korean War draft, the 1956 anti-communist riots in Amsterdam, the funeral of a famous Resistance leader in 1967, and the present-day anti-nuclear movement all strike Anton close to home, figuratively and literally.

With each of these historical events comes a reminder of the inescapable past; it seems that nearly everything from cigarette lighters to aircraft, and nearly everyone from old neighbors to his new friend, Cor Takes (John Kraaykamp), reminds him of that terrible day long ago. Objects Anton sees physically become the objects they make him remember. Even Anton's first wife, Saskia, bears a striking resemblance to the woman he met in jail (both are played by Monique van de Ven).

Paradoxically, The Assault proves itself a daring film through the accuracy with which it follows Mulisch's novel. Mulisch's plot and dialogue are faithfully rendered, of course, but more surprisingly, so is his presentation. Like the book, the film is narrated in third-person by an anonymous, omniscient voice. The film is divided, like the book, into episodes marked by the year in which they take place.

Like a documentary, the year of the episode flashes on the screen, followed by the voice-over narration and actual footage of historical events from that year, beginning on the geopolitical scale and swiftly narrowing down to events in Anton's front yard. Such narrative techniques may seem overly obvious or literary--and literal-minded--but they are surprisingly effective in showing how history and memory intrude into Anton's life.

The film is also daring in its confrontation of the subject of the European post-war mentality. Takes, the veteran of the Resistance who is always reliving the war and "would do it all over again tomorrow, if [he] had to," stands as a foil for Anton, who denies his past and buries his guilt. Over the years, Anton's suppressed feelings put him under increased strain, which manifests itself physically as seizures and toothaches.

Although he does not want to, he--and the film--must eventually piece together the memories, clues, and chance meetings to confront the question, "Was there a reason?" Was there a reason that the Steenwijks were singled out for destruction, or a reason that Anton alone survived? These questions imply the larger question of the meaning and legacy of the war itself for Europeans, who are still living through its aftermath. The film deserves praise for asking this question and for offering no easy answer, despite the film's cathartic ending.

The acting in The Assault is excellent. Van Uchelen gives the young Anton the right mixture of wide-eyed horror and stunned silence, while de Lint successfully portrays the gradual transformation wrought by the stifled memories of the adult Anton. Kraaykamp is incendiary as the embittered Takes, and van de Ven is surprisingly expressive for an actress who, as the prisoner, must recite her lines in a whisper, with most of her face in darkness.

Even though the film is two and a half hours long and spans forty years, The Assault is actually a short epic, concerned with the destiny of the post-war European soul. There is not a gratuitous scene or extraneous line of dialogue in it. Director Fons Rademakers is meticulous yet never plodding. The Assault is a film of obvious artifice, yet it is rarely didactic and always powerful.