as The Assault
The Netherlands, 1986
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DE AANSLAG as The Assault The Netherlands, 1986 |
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Directed by | Fons Rademakers | |||
| Based on the novel by | Harry Mulish | ||||
| Screenplay by | Gerard Soeteman | ||||
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Cast: (in credits order) |
Derek de Lint - Anton Steenwijk Marc Van Uchelen - Young Anton Steenwijk Monique Van De Ven - Saskia de Graaff/Truus Coster John Kraaykamp - Cor Takes Huub van der Lubbe - Fake Ploeg Elly Weller - Mrs. Beumer Ina van de Molen - Karin Korteweg Frans Vorstman - Father Steenwijk Edda Barends - Mother Steenwijk Casper de Boer - Peter Steenwijk | ||||
| Music by | Jurriaan Andriessen | ||||
| Release date | February, 6 1986 | ||||
| Runtime | 144 min/edition video version of 126 min | ||||
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Some details about "The Assault" in new old Derek de Lint's interview from "Playboy Nederland", February, 1986 | |||||
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Leonard Maltin Review
A 12-year-old's family is liquidated in the final days of WWII, and he represses his memories and feelings while growing into manhood. Evocative performances and fine direction enhance a story that is both truthful and heartbreaking. Long, but suspenseful, with many thought-provoking moments. Screenplay by Gerard Soeteman based on a novel by Harry Mulisch. Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. A film not easy to forget. © 1996 Microsoft Corporation and/or its suppliers. All rights reserved. Also Roger Ebert Review: 3.0 stars out of 4 THE ASSAULT, which won the 1987 Academy Award as best foreign film, begins in Nazi-occupied Holland in the bitter late days of World War II. On a quiet suburban street, a Dutch collaborator is shot to death by partisans. From behind their curtains, the fearful residents peek out into the night, certain that the Nazis will perform dreadful reprisals. Shadowy figures dart out and drag the body to the front of the house next door, and then the movie is the story of the rest of the life of Anton Steenwijk, the young boy who lived in that house. His family is taken away by the Nazis. All of them disappear, apparently liquidated, except for Anton, who is spared through a combination of bureaucratic oversights and lucky chances. After the war, Anton goes to college, marries, and becomes successful in his profession. Always his life is haunted by the aftermath of that terrible night. But there are two other families also scarred by the assault. One is the family of the murdered Nazi collaborator. Anton runs across the collaborator's son a few years later and finds that he has become a bitter young right-winger, a youth whose father's political choice made him into an outsider and menial laborer who was scorned after the war. Even later, in a 1960s ban-the-bomb parade, Anton meets the woman who lived next door on that night and learns why her father dragged the dead body to the front of his house, assuring that another family would be punished by the Nazis. He had his reasons. Perhaps they were good. Of course, from the point of view of a man who lost his entire family because of those reasons, they were not good enough. THE ASSAULT is like a fictional footnote to SHOAH, the great documentary that also asked difficult, perhaps unanswerable, questions about guilt and blame in the Holocaust. It also is a little like RASHOMON, the Japanese film that looked at the same crime from many different viewpoints and discovered many different versions of the truth. A terrible thing happened on that night. Lives were destroyed. For those who survived, each one had to deal with the guilt in a different way. Even Anton had guilt, because he was spared when all of his family was murdered. The truest and most painful moment in the film takes place at a time about twenty years after the night of the assault. Anton—happily married, a father, successful, content—is suddenly visited by a great devastation. To call it a depression would be too mild. He is overcome with a crushing awareness of the fact that utter injustice exists in our world, that evil is real, that death is irrevocable. In a way, this movie is about how he is able to continue his life in the face of that realization. Although THE ASSAULT is a film that asks important questions and examines them fearlessly, it is not as effective as it could be. The film covers nearly forty years, and that is a weakness as well as a strength. The power of the film is that it shows how one night of tragedy has echoed down the decades, affecting many lives for years afterward. Multiply this assault by the millions of others, and you have some measure of the devastation caused by the war. Yet at the same time, by covering so many lives for so many years, the film loses something in energy and focus. The canvas is too large. The moments I will remember best are the small ones, one in particular: On the night of the assault, Anton is comforted in a jail cell by the young woman partisan who committed the murder that led to his family's death. Years later, through a coincidence, he is able to meet her partner and tell the man, now old and ill, something he never knew: that she loved him. © 1996 Microsoft Corporation and/or its suppliers. All rights reserved. | |||||
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quote from movie review on tape
A nerve-twisting thriller. A harrowing war story. And a penetrating human drama of memories, mystery — and murder. The Assault is alt of these in one extraordinary film. Winner of the 1987 Academy Award" for Best Foreign Language Film, it is a nightmarish — but all-too-true — tale of war and its inevitable, undeniable impact on fragile human lives. On a street in occupied Holland in 1945, a Nazi collaborator is murdered. An innocent family is blamed, and they are massacred when their home is razed to ashes. Only a young boy, Anton, survives, and he carries the horror of his experience within him. Anton struggles to maintain a pointedly normal existence, but eventually he must confront his relentless memories and come to terms with the truth. Hailed by The Hollywood Reporter as "an exceptional film...packed with meaning and intensity," this compelling film is a vivid exploration of heroism, deceit, cowardice and survival during history's darkest hour.
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