HET
DINER A DUTCH FILM ABOUT CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
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Leen Moelker
Herman Koch, a Dutch novelist
has written a famous book: The Dinner. From
2009 more than half a million books are sold. Translated in 37 languages it has
become a very popular book in more than 30 countries. In the meantime the book
has a film transcription, released September 2013 in Toronto and November 7th
in The Netherlands. Also Cate
Blanchet, actress and director, has announced a film project based on The Dinner. Why is The Dinner so popular? How to judge the film? Which message could
be included?
1 The story of The Dinner
Paul Lohman (Jacob Derwig) and
his wife Claire (Thekla Reuten) were invited by the brother of Paul, Serge
Lohman (Daan Schuurmans) and his wife Babette (Kim van Kooten) for having diner
in a famous pricy restaurant. Serge goes for the highest political position of
prime minister in the running elections campaign. Paul is a teacher of history
but suffers from a long during depression and does not work actually.
Directly after arriving in the restaurant Serge declared his intentions:
“We have to discuss our sons.” Rick (Serge Mensink) and an adopted African
child Beau (Andre Dongelmans) are Serge’s and Babette’s sons. They are at the
same age of cousin Michel (16), son of Paul and Claire. All of them know about
a certain crime the boys are involved with. A waif had been murdered by them
but nobody knows, except their parents. However, there’s a video of the crime
somewhere.
Babette is angry about her husband’s decision to quit the election
campaign. Serge fears questions about the crime and he wants to clear it all in
a press conference. Babette goes for their dreams of reaching the political top
level and disagree with Serge.
Claire wants to keep silence about de ‘crime’ because she qualified what
happened as an accident and not as a crime. Paul thinks he knows every detail
of the happenings but he lacks some information Claire has. They all have some
secrets.
The dinner begins and while dining they try to convince each other of
their different point of views. Shall we go to the police? If nobody knows
about the ‘accident’ why tell it to anybody? “People will forget,” Claire says.
It is clear, Serge will not indulge, nor Babette and Claire will do. Paul, who
is wrestling with the question, discovers more secrets between Claire, Babette,
Beau and Michel by means of mobile phones, which he took with hem not always accidentally.
When Serge insists on giving up his
political ambitions to save himself of not wanted questions and to provide in
his son’s happiness, Claire took immediately some extraordinary measures to
avoid that. Eventually being at home,
Paul watched Claire caring a wounded and oozy Michel….
2 Conclusion
Menno Meyes has made a film with different themes. First, it is intended
as a family tragedy with important questions about love, care and sympathy and
their limits. Second, The Dinner
elaborates themes like political correctness, justification and righteousness.
I appreciate Meyes has followed the book very closely. When the book is
structured around he different courses of a dinner, the film has a looser
structure with many mobile phones and go to-and-fro’s.
The end of the story is rather disappointing because there’s no
solution, on the contrary, the situation has become even worse.
Is it worth watching? Yes, many people will be able to share feelings
with one or more personages. Identification with any character will surprise
about the strength of love, hate and mother care and their boundaries. This ability
makes the film very humanly and it is elaborating anew questions of crime and
punishment, like Dostojewski did before.
3 Meaning and interpretation
3.1 Cinematographical level
At first glance the mise-en-scène of The
Dinner doesn’t rise problems. We see
the actors on location in a restaurant with a lot of people around walking,
talking and laughing. Yet, this is one thing I could not appreciate. Regularly,
the medium shots of the four dining and arguing actors are disturbed by passing
byers, making continuity in watching often problematic. Besides, the camera is
keeping the focus on Paul. Others often stand up to ring, to go to the toilets,
to avoid quarrels, which was far from nice to experience. It’s not easy to make a dinner party worth
watching. The chosen solution here is physical movements of the actors, which needs
a lot of movements of the camera too.
Paul attracts our attention continually – he is the storyteller – for instance, by means of close ups. It’s a
pleasure to follow Paul while talking and acting. Of-screen we hear also loud music
obviously to emphasize the seriousness of the situation, but this is in my view
too much an attempt to impress.
3.2 Narrative level
The story of the book and film named The
Dinner is told by Paul (I-figure storyteller). His behaviour is very
whimsically and he is quarreling easily.
Paul gives us an introduction. It is clear, he is unwillingly to
understand the particular circumstances, and he follows his wife Claire in her
opinion. Paul is telling us –while in focus or not – everything we ought to
know, sometimes synchronically, or by voice-overs. But we get not enough information
to discover the essential facts of his storytelling. That’s why e.g. the director has added supporting music
fragments. I could not always appreciate that noisy background-music.
So, Paul tells us the story and his perspectives are leading. But many
things happen simultaneously and we are obliged to construct – of course – our own
fabula. This is too heavy a task for some spectators, I think, because it takes
too much effort. Normally, storytelling starts with a few information, we experience
a developing story and then we have to create our interpretation by means of
new information. Basically, The Dinner
has an easy setting, like dinners have. However, the plot contains flash backs
(Paul quarreling with the school manager) en flash forwards (a running and
bleeding Beau in the forest). The results are questions like, what had happened
exactly with the boys? Who knows what, about what? These are important things
we continually bear in mind, but we have to wait for vague answers till the end
of the film. And yet, we can hardly infer the truth from what we see. Observing
Paul who is watching Claire who is cleaning and caring her son Michel, we have
to understand what had happened. Fortunately, the book gives us better
information about the end of the story.
3.3 Symbolic level
In his novel Crime and Punishment, Dostojewski is exploring crime and punishment
by means of his personage Raskolnikov, who pleads idealistically for a society without criminal figures. It is
one’s right and even his duty to ‘remove’ for ever people, who spreads evil
thoughts and bad behaviour from society.
The Dinner is appealing to
the right of self-judgement in cases of a certain crime. Do we have the right
to keep silence about a crime? Can we
declare guilty or innocent ourselves? This is where this film is talking about.
Director Menno Meyes had no intention to give us moralistic stuff. In
Anglo-Saxon countries, he declared in one interview, people are too busy with
this subject. On the contrary, he only wanted to make a family-film with love,
sympathy and conflicts. Another film director, Thomas Vinterberg, had the same
intentions with his films Festen (1998)
and Jagten (2012). Particularly Festen also shows dining people
discussing secrets till the end of the film, eventually without an acceptable
clearance.
Indeed, we experience actor Paul as a loving, caring and involved father
and husband. Babette is a model of the ambitious generation while Claire stands
for a mother of evil when her child is threatened. Actor Serge represents
political correctness.
Notwithstanding Meyes ‘s intention to make a film about relationships,
the conflicts are of a thrilling level
and are concerning live and dead.
4. Actors and Music
The cast of The Dinner is well chosen. Jacob Derwig and Kim
van Kooten impressed spectators earlier on television with their role in In therapy (2010). Although her small role in The
American next to George Clooney, Thekla Reuten showed her abilities. Daan
Schuurmans attributed in many films and television series like Baantjer and De Keyzer & de Boer Advocaten.
The trailer sound track of the film is the appropriate song Blue Bittersweet sung by Ilse de Lange[1].
It reflects the contents of the story. Supporting musical dramatic effects are
derived from opera performances[2],
while Maria Callas sings the appropriate Puccini song O babbino mio caro (O my loving child).[3] Callas’ music is emphasizing the love
between parents and their children, while the opera sounds support the
emotional utterances of the actors.
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Film: Het
Diner Regie:
Menno Meyes
Scenario:
Menno Meyes and Herman Koch, writer of the book The Dinner Release:
2013, November 7th
Length: 87 minutes
Producers: Maarten Swart, Reinout Oerlemans. Eyeworks film & TV
drama.
IMDB rating 6.6/10
Language:
Dutch
Flushing/Middelburg,
2013 Nov.16th.
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Middelburg, 2013, November 20.
[2] I recognised George Bizet, Aria Habanera (‘Love is a rebellious bird’) in:
‘Carmen’ (Paris 1875) as background music.