Almayer's Folly (Chantal Akerman, 2011)

Almayer's Folly, directed by the late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman and first released in 2011, is a highly atmospheric and contemplative film that examines, inter alia, the impact of colonialism.  Adapted from Joseph Conrad's eponymous debut novel, the film was Akerman's final narrative feature before her untimely death in 2015; during her lengthy career, Akerman made just one other literary adaptation, 2000's austere The Captive, which was loosely based on Marcel Proust's La Prisonnière.  Akerman took a similarly liberal approach when it came to translating Conrad to the screen, although Francis Ford Coppola's much-discussed Apocalypse Now remains an even more outré stab at the author's work.

Just as Coppola transposed Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the 19th-century Belgian Congo to 20th-century Vietnam, Akerman updates the author's 1895 novel to the 1950s.  Although shot in Cambodia, Akerman's film is set in Malaysia, where it follows the story of Dutch trader Almayer (Stanislas Merhar) and his mixed-race daughter Nina (Aurora Marion).  Almayer, trapped in a loveless marriage to local woman Zahira (Sakhna Oum), is clinging to fading hopes of finding gold deposits in the land that surrounds his riverside home (this building, as explained in the book, is the "folly" of the title).  Moreover, Zahira's adoptive father Lingard (Marc Barbé) is busy burning through the wealth earmarked for Almayer.

With all else failing, Almayer focuses on securing his daughter's future.  After some vague talk of a trip involving visits to Paris and London, Nina is packed off to a colonial boarding school, where it is hoped she will become more in tune with her European heritage; her absence only compounds Almayer's misery.  Merhar, who also starred in the aforementioned The Captive, delivers a well-judged performance as Almayer, capturing the title character's slide into madness as he struggles with both his flailing business and the painful separation from his cherished daughter; Belgian actress Marion brings a beguiling intensity to her role, perfectly embodying the dichotomy of a girl caught between two hugely contrasting worlds.

Almayer's Folly requires patience, and it takes some time for its brilliance to emerge; this demanding film is both elliptical and highly reflective of its director's formally rigorous methods.  Yet it is not inapt to suggest that Almayer's Folly would form a fine double bill with Apocalypse Now—whose redux version features Akerman favourite Aurore Clément—with Akerman's ice providing a counterpoint to Coppola's fire.  Conrad, whose works often hinge on what is left unsaid, proves an ideal fit for Chantal Akerman, with the economy of his storytelling neatly dovetailing with her languid, minimalist approach.  This late masterpiece from Akerman is an exemplary meditation on the death rattle of colonialism.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

The Captive (Chantal Akerman, 2000)

First released in 2000, Chantal Akerman's The Captive is an updating of Marcel Proust's The Prisoner, the fifth volume of his epic novel In Search of Lost Time.  This striking, formally rigorous film reframes Proust's study of obsessive control to great effect; perhaps surprisingly, Akerman made just one other literary adaptation, her eponymous 2010 film of Joseph Conrad's debut novel Almayer's Folly.  The Captive is one of four of the late Belgian director's features—the others being Golden Eighties, Tomorrow We Move and De Afspraken van Anna—that have recently been restored in 4K by the Royal Film Archive of Belgium.

The Captive follows Simon (Stanislas Merhar), a rich idler who becomes increasingly obsessed with his girlfriend Ariane (Sylvie Testud).  Simon dictates and monitors every aspect of Ariane's life, and is particularly interested in her friend Andrée (Olivia Bonamy), with whom he suspects she is having an affair; Ariane, for her part, is compliant yet inscrutable.  The long takes and attenuated pacing allow the audience to fully immerse themselves in the characters' fractured psychology, while the immaculate cinematography, by the Léopoldville-born Sabine Lancelin, lends an icy claustrophobia to the proceedings.

Merhar, who later played the title role in the beguiling Almayer's Folly, delivers a fine performance as Simon, deftly capturing the character's vanity and neuroses as he attempts to tighten his grip on Ariane.  Testud, who would also go on to reteam with Akerman (on Tomorrow We Move), is equally impressive, with her Ariane embodying an opaqueness that keeps her a mystery to Simon and the audience alike.  As the film presents the fraught dynamic between the ethereal Ariane and the controlling Simon, Akerman explores wildly contrasting ideas of love and the blurred lines that sit between devotion and possession.

It may well be that Ariane is as unknowable to Simon as Proust is to the non-francophone; it's been posited that English translations of In Search of Lost Time—of which there have been several—largely fail to illuminate the text.  There is also the challenge of another kind of translation: that of adapting Proust, who was openly dismissive of cinema, for the screen.  Prior to The Captive, filmmakers Volker Schlöndorff (Swann in Love) and Raúl Ruiz (Time Regained) grappled gamely with other volumes from the same novel, but it is perhaps Chantal Akerman's haunting effort that best captures the essence of Proust's magnum opus.

Darren Arnold

Image: BFI

Maldoror (Fabrice du Welz, 2024)

Despite his Belgian nationality, Fabrice du Welz has often been linked with the New French Extremity, as has that fine performer Laurent Lucas, whose extensive work in the movement includes Leos Carax's Pola X, Julia Ducournau's Raw, Marina de Van's In My Skin, and a trio of films for Bertrand Bonello.  Maldoror sees du Welz once again reunite with Lucas, who previously starred in the director's films Calvaire, Adoration and Alleluia.  As with du Welz's feature debut Calvaire, Maldoror pits Lucas against a quite diabolical character played by Jackie Berroyer, an actor who has never been more sinister than in his work for du Welz, which also includes a turn in Inexorable (pictured below), whose female leads Alba Gaïa Bellugi—sister of Galatéa— and Mélanie Doutey both have roles in Maldoror.

While Du Welz's longstanding fascination with the macabre is present in the riveting Maldoror, what is conspicuous by its absence is the streak of jet-black humour normally associated with his work; given that the film focuses on the case of Marc Dutroux, Belgium's most notorious child killer, this seems wholly appropriate.  Many consider the string of abduction murders carried out by Dutroux to be the worst crimes in Belgian history—indeed, the impact of the case was so profound that one-third of Belgians with the surname Dutroux sought to change their last name.  Prior to the Dutroux affair, the Charleroi suburb of Marcinelle was best known for a 1950s mining accident that killed 262 people; that this disaster has now been eclipsed says much about these brutal murders' terrible legacy.

As such, du Welz needed to take a most cautious approach when preparing his film, which features some fabricated elements in order to provide a sense of justice that many Belgians felt was lacking from the real-life case (the director has cited Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood as a key influence in this regard).  The names of the characters have been fictionalised, with Sergi López's skin-crawling Marcel Dedieu serving as a proxy for Dutroux as Anthony Bajon's young police officer Paul Chartier becomes obsessed with linking the suspect to the disappearance of two young girls.  The impulsive Chartier is largely hamstrung by both his jobsworth boss Hinkel (Lucas) and a system in which, à la David Fincher's Zodiac, three separate police services are rarely on the same page.

Maldoror is a police procedural that has much else in common with Fincher's touchstone of the subgenre: each film runs to over two and a half hours and features a protagonist whose monomaniacal devotion to cracking a serial killer case results in the loss of their job and family.  In choosing to focus on the investigation as opposed to the crimes, du Welz handles the material in a subtle, tactful manner—yet Maldoror remains a queasy spectacle, one that will prove too strong for some.  It is now almost 30 years since Dutroux was apprehended—he was caught in 1996, the same year the death penalty was abolished in Belgium—but this dreadful episode remains a highly sensitive matter for many of Fabrice du Welz's compatriots, as does the topic of his next film: the rubber trade in the Belgian Congo.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Soundtrack to a Coup d'État (Johan Grimonprez, 2024)

Dag Hammarskjöld, the erudite Swedish diplomat and economist who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, was catapulted into global politics during a turbulent period of cold war tensions and decolonisation struggles.  Hammarskjöld established the first UN peacekeeping forces during the Congo Crisis, a proxy conflict that forms the basis of Belgian-Dutch-French documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'État.  While Dag Hammarskjöld is indeed a key player in the film, the main focus of this highly compelling work is Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese leader who was assassinated in January 1961 (Hammarskjöld's own premature demise came a mere eight months later).

Curiously, the Swede's suspicious death in a plane crash isn't covered here, perhaps because that knotty subject is worthy of a film of its own.  Soundtrack to a Coup d'État—which screens today at the BFI London Film Festival—emerges as a thorough exploration of the complex relationship between jazz music and the political turmoil of the cold war, with particular emphasis on the events surrounding Congo's independence from Belgium.  Directed by the Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez (Double Take, Shadow World), the documentary is bookended by the moment when jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach gatecrashed the UN Security Council in order to protest the killing of Lumumba.

Grimonprez's essay film isn't simply a dry retelling of historical events, but rather presents a narrative that splices the genre of jazz with anticolonialism.  It portrays how the music became a medium for expressing solidarity with the oppressed; the soundtrack, which features numerous legendary jazzmen and women (Duke Ellington, Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk), encapsulates both the spirit of resistance and the thirst for change.  The film also considers the roles of the US, the UN and others during the decolonisation process, noting the vagaries of geopolitics and the fight for control over the mineral-rich Belgian Congo—a country that supplied most of the uranium for the Manhattan Project.

The film includes fine archival footage of US jazz icons, and highlights how some of these artists were used as unwitting decoys as the CIA set about meddling in post-colonial Africa.  Perhaps the most infamous of these episodes, detailed here, saw "jazz ambassador" Louis Armstrong visit the African continent, where his performance in Léopoldville provided a smokescreen that allowed for intelligence to be gathered on Lumumba; while Satchmo was still on his tour, the man who had served as the DR Congo's first prime minister was killed by firing squad.  Soundtrack to a Coup d'État isn't always entirely successful in its attempts to conflate jazz with politics, but it is immaculately assembled and thoroughly absorbing.

Darren Arnold

Images: Flanders Image

#21XOXO / The Sasha (S. & I. Özbilge / M. M. Peiró, 2019)

The Culture is a collection of eight short films which screens at the London Film Festival on the 11th and 13th of October, and every film in the programme takes a look at online culture - something which only recently seemed very futuristic but is now firmly embedded in our everyday lives.  I've only seen a quarter of the films which feature in The Culture, but the ones I've watched have been quite impressive; on this basis, the other 75% of the programme should be worth catching.  The selection includes one film from the Netherlands and two from Belgium, although Belgian title Zombies - a co-production with DR Congo - has thus far eluded me.

The Belgian film in the programme which I have seen is #21XOXO - a clever, witty and rather adult slice of animation which sees a young woman use various forms of technology in her search for love.  As we all know, it's now possible to line up potential partners without even leaving the comfort of home, which is exactly what our protagonist does here; while such practice isn't especially new, it's nonetheless a significant marker of how social interaction has dramatically changed since the advent of new technologies, and the film reminds us of this as it forces us to consider our online selves.  #21XOXO is a fun, refreshing and colourful short, one which turns up something new just when you thought there wasn't much left to say about those who spend their days glued to one screen or another.

The Dutch offering in The Culture takes the form of The Sasha, a contemplative look at the work of astronaut Charles Duke, who was a member of the three-man crew on the Apollo 16 mission.  Among his other lunar duties, Duke was charged with taking photographs, and it's this aspect of his work in the Descartes Highlands that The Sasha focuses on.  Duke attempted to take a photo of the entire Earth from space, but the iconic image we all know as The Blue Marble was actually taken during the next (and final) Apollo mission.  There's a fascinating personal touch in the Apollo 16 story: Duke left a picture of himself, his wife and their two sons on the lunar surface, which he of course photographed.  On the back was an inscription: "This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth. Landed on the Moon, April 1972", followed by the signatures of Duke's family.  In addition to their virtual visit to the moon via this photograph, Duke's wife and sons had lunar craters named after them. 

Nowadays, we can all enjoy a lunar excursion of sorts thanks to Google Moon (where the Duke family photo can be found at marker 20 in the Apollo 16 site), and footage from this has been used in The Sasha; thus, the film features the traditional chemical photography of Duke's pictures alongside the sophisticated 3D rendering of the moon's surface as provided by Google.  This illustrates just how far technology has advanced in the years since Apollo 16 (although we haven't set foot on the moon since the year of that mission).  As such, it's easy to see why the film has been grouped with #21XOXO, even if the two films boast very different styles.  The Sasha proves to be a hypnotic, eerie and thought-provoking work, one which will leave you reflecting on that old family photograph which, although now almost certainly bleached beyond all recognition, remains up there on the lunar highlands.

Darren Arnold

Images: image.net

Cold Case Hammarskjöld (Mads Brügger, 2019)

Cold Case Hammarskjöld sees feather-ruffling filmmaker Mads Brügger turn his attention to the mysterious death of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.  During the Congo Crisis, Hammarskjöld was en route to attempt to broker a ceasefire between Katangese troops and UN forces, but was killed in a plane crash in what was Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).  Congo had only recently gained independence from Belgium, and tensions were high in the region; Hammarskjöld was keen for newly-independent African countries to establish themselves and escape the long shadow of colonialism, and naturally this stance brought about many enemies.  It was widely known that mining companies such as Belgian venture Union Minière would benefit from the removal of Hammarskjöld, but quite who, if anyone, is responsible for his death - MI6, the CIA and South African intelligence have all been suggested as possible saboteurs of the plane - has remained the murkiest of mysteries for well over 50 years.

Brügger's investigation takes him to various African locations, including the spot where the Douglas DC-6 carrying Hammarskjöld went down; for much of the film, Brügger is joined by Göran Björkdahl, who possesses a metal plate - purportedly from Hammarskjöld's plane - which his father obtained while visiting the crash site in the 1970s.  Although Brügger is digging (quite literally, at one point) to find out the truth about Hammarskjöld's death, it's clear early on that the film, in many ways, is more the Mads Brügger show than anything else; perhaps this is to be expected, given his past life as a TV host.  There's a showboating, flippant and baiting side to Brügger, who's first seen proudly sporting an all-white outfit; later, he - like Melania Trump in Kenya - dons a pith helmet, that symbol of white colonial rule.  He also, for no discernible reason, chooses to dictate to two equally baffled secretaries.  But such eccentric behaviour masks a man who is actually quite adept when it comes to obtaining sensitive information, and Brügger goes further than many would dare, unearthing some unpleasant, genuinely disturbing findings concerning post-colonial Africa.

Black witnesses were not seen as credible at the time and place of Hammarskjöld's death so, as you'd both hope and expect, Brügger tracks down a number of of them, and they all recall certain common elements from that day in 1961: the sight of a second, smaller aircraft; a flash of light in the sky; a loud, gunshot-like noise.  From these (and other) interviews, a hypothesis emerges: a bomb was planted on the unguarded aircraft before it took off from Léopoldville, but this explosive device failed to detonate; thus, a backup plan was put into action, wherein a fighter jet was scrambled in order to shoot down Hammarskjöld's plane.  A Belgian-British pilot who served with the RAF in WW2, Jan van Risseghem, is here alleged to be the man who carried out the mission.  Van Risseghem died in 2007, but his links to breakaway state Katanga are well documented.  There's also the matter of a playing card - the ace of spades - which was apparently tucked under the dead Hammarskjöld's shirt collar; apparently this calling card - a "death card" - signals CIA involvement, although instinct tells us it may well have been planted by someone completely unconnected to Langley.

All this is sufficiently troubling, but Brügger's enquiries eventually lead him to an organisation called the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR).  Don't be fooled by its benign name - this was a shadowy paramilitary outfit which worked with the Apartheid regime, and its alleged activities range from involvement in Dag Hammarskjöld's murder to the spreading of AIDS (under the guise of giving vaccines against the virus) in order to eradicate black Africans.  SAIMR was headed by a figure known as "Commodore" Keith Maxwell (among other aliases), whose written ravings reveal an unhinged character, one who'd possibly read Heart of Darkness one too many times (but still missed Conrad's central point).  Maxwell has frequently been likened to Auschwitz's "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele, which perhaps tells you more than you wish to know about his deeds.  It's hard to work out what, if anything, is true among Maxwell's diaries, and a valid question is asked more than once: why would such classified, incriminating information be written down?  Cold Case Hammarskjöld is an unnerving, chilling and frequently horrifying film, and it stands as one of the year's finest documentaries.  It screens at the London Film Festival today and tomorrow.

Darren Arnold

Images: image.net

Henri Storck, Part 3: De patroon is dood (1938)

The final film we'll look at in our overview of Henri Storck's "social films" is an appropriately solemn documentary of the funeral of Belgische Werkliedenpartij leader Emile Vandervelde.  De patroon is dood was one of five films made by its director in 1938, and it closes out the Cinematek "social films" set in a manner which underlines Storck's greatness.  It may lack the immediacy of Borinage or De huizen van ellende, but De patroon is dood shows another side of Storck as he records a sober state occasion in an inventive yet unfussy manner.

Emile Vandervelde was a leading figure in both Belgian and international socialism, and earned the nickname "The Boss" long before it was hijacked by a certain singer-songwriter from New Jersey.  He held several ministerial posts, with his final cabinet role being Minister of Public Health in Paul van Zeeland's government.  Critical of King Leopold II's creation (and direct rule) of the Congo Free State and eager to intervene in the Spanish Civil War, Vandervelde was a strong proponent of internationalism, but he would nevertheless come under pressure from younger members of his party as his career (and life) headed towards its conclusion.  His strong socialist ideals very much lined up with those of Henri Storck, so the existence of this film isn't too surprising, and it serves a dual function as both tribute and public record.

Storck's deftly edited short film - it's less than half an hour long - captures both the scale and spectacle of the obsèque as huge crowds take to the streets of Brussels.  The funeral was held on the penultimate day of 1938, and it was a cold, grey and wet Friday, but this didn't deter those who wished to pay their final respects to a man who'd served his people right up to the end.  Storck expertly records the mourning, the flags, the flowers and, most poignantly, the torches which are held aloft as the brief December daylight fades.  We also hear from two future Prime Ministers in the form of Léon Blum - who by that stage had already held office twice in France - and Camille Huysmans; their presence here serves to further underline the great importance of Emile Vandervelde to Belgian politics, and De patroon is dood does much to secure the legacies of both its director and his subject.

Darren Arnold

Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Audio clip of Emile Vandervelde