Biography
The Unflinching Cinema of Cyrus Frisch
Ever since film school, Dutch filmmaker Cyrus Frisch has been stuck with the label of enfant terrible. But while that might have been fitting for his first films, the tag is now out of date. As his cinematic adventures matured into a series of meditations on the guilt-ridden soul of society.
Frisch's first notable film-school short, the charmingly titled De Kut van Maria (1990) includes a rebellious display of deranged sex and suicide games in a pub toilet featuring a man wearing a bullfighters costume and a plus- sized woman.
Next, his debut-feature Zelfbeklag (Self-Pity, 1993), gave cine-narcissism a new dimension: Frisch himself spasmodically cringes in front of a blue and white backdrop, initially fully dressed and then in the nude, before trying to drown himself in a fish tank, while star critic Hans Beerekamp denounces the director's 1992 short, Welcome 2. Self-Pity is actually a much more interesting and rewarding than it sounds: the visual textures are beautiful; the slapdash settings affords the charme of hurried decisions that simply feel right; and there's an uncommon tenderness in the way that Frisch shoots both his own fresh-faced looks and the stern, elderly journalist's lived-in skin.
In 1997, Frisch finally knocked everybody out with I Shall Honour Your Life... (Ik zal je leven eren..., 1997), a personal and unpretentious documentary that explores the death of one of his teachers, the legendary Dutch critic Hans Saaltink, and considers what becomes of a material existence once the soul has passed on. By chance, Frisch was present when Saaltink died - and filmed what happened because he didn't know what else to do. The emergency services arrive too late to do anything, and Frisch shows bystanders horrified by their own inability to help. The film begins with a long scene in Saaltink's messy apartment where students and friends rummage through his possessions and marvel at how he could have lived amid such chaos and neglected himself to such a degree. Now that the person who held the mess together has departed, only unglued pieces remain. The film ends with another long scene, this time in a crematorium, in which Frisch documents the details of the process, including Saaltink's body burning in the incinerator. True to his title, Frisch does indeed honor the life and legacy of a critic who was never afraid of the crass and confrontational, and who firmly believed that showing the violence of our world to stir up outrage was the morally correct thing to do.
In his next major project, Vergeef me (Forgive me, 2001), Frisch set out to provoke viewers by confronting them with a level of misery that simply couldn't be ignored. The result is a fascinating treatise on abjection and self-abuse as a condition of modern society. Frisch assembled a group of outcasts - an alcoholic with multiple sclerosis, a junkie, you name it - and then put them through the wringer Jerry Springer-style, only even blunter, until they were at each other's throats in a spectacle of berserk depravity. When the film was commended for its bravery a hell-bent Frisch mounted a touring stage production featuring his cast of lost souls, knowing full well that none of them could act to save their lives. The show became a cult phenomenon. And whenever the occasional audience member accused him of exploiting his cast, the performers would angrily insist that they were happy to participate and were perfectly in control. Forgive me effectively suggests that an unspoken contract exists between society's abusers and its abused. How best to sum up this unsettling mix of shockumentary, experimental theater, and philosophical tract on ethics? How about Full-Contact Funny Games: Netherlands.
Which brings us to Blackwater Fever (2008) and Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me It Would Become This Bad in Afghanistan (Waarom heeft niemand mij verteld dat het zo erg zou worden in Afghanistan, 2007). Both are guilt- and head-trip studies in disintegration. While the former follows the journey of a malaria-stricken long distance driver, the latter holes up in an apartment with an Afghanistan War veteran caught in a downward spiral of rants and ruminations. Blackwater Fever's self-absorbed protagonist traverses a landscape that starts out resembling the U.S. and ends up looking like the Horn of Africa, littered with corpses and populated by soldiers and misery-stricken civilians. He pays no attention to any of them, driving on in a fever dream, only occasionally snapping out of it. Frisch never makes clear what's what: past and present and fear and desire all merge. Some shots seem endless, others just pop up and immediately disappear. Besides the lack of discernible rhythm, there are inexplicable angles, weird texture shifts and images from the count-the-pores school of HD. With no narrative and nothing happening, the ride is all. At another extreme, the protagonist of Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me stares out of his Amsterdam window and sees a battle zone in slow-motion images of delirium; jerky, staticky, color-drained cell-phone-camera shots of clashes between immigrant youth and police. These images were in fact captured by Frisch from his own window over the years. The traumatized war veteran won't go outside. It's all too much for him. The end of the line in Blackwater Fever is symbolized by a village whose inhabitants, slowly and aimlessly moving about, look like a cross between Auschwitz survivors and zombies from a Romero movie. When Frisch was barred from shooting this scene in an actual refugee camp in Sudan, he built a set in Namibia, filled it with emaciated extras, and then sent in his star. The look of horror on Fernhout 's face is real - the actor broke down, weeping uncontrollably. He fled the set and subsequently professed his hatred toward Frisch for subjecting him to the ordeal. The lesson of these two films is simple enough: the world is disintegrating due to the fact that everything looks and feels the same to us now. Frisch's films embody the stupor we're in as a civilization.
Coming after this one-two punch, Oogverblindend (Dazzle, 2009). seems almost conventional. The unseen caller (Rutger Hauer) is a doctor in Argentina who has decided to commit suicide and is making one last phone call to an old friend. By mistake, he's connected with a woman (Georgina Verbaan) who's in a distraught state due to the violence she sees in the streets outside her window. During the conversation, it emerges that the doctor is complicit in crimes committed by Argentina's military dictatorship, and it's this burden of guilt that he can no longer bear. Frisch is obviously aiming for a larger audience. There's nothing too challenging here, and he delivers name actors, a clear, intriguing story with a sense of hope, and a precise political message. The latter point is the clincher: to a Dutch audience, the Argentina-Netherlands connection is an obvious allusion to the Dutch Royal Family's well-known allegiance with Argentinean fascists (the Crown Princess's father was secretary of state during the Videla dictatorship). And that, of course, is just another of the many things that the Netherlands is perfectly able to life with.
Olaf Müller
