The miracle of Paul Verhoeven might be that his best movies are meticulously balanced contradictions. He's a moralist and a sensationalist, a humanist and a misanthrope. He presents sex as erotic yet sleazy, violence as deplorable yet thrilling. Many of his films play as both systematic genre fodder and subversive attacks on systematic genre fodder.
is one big fat parody of psychological thrillers, yet I dare you to find a smarter or more effective one. It's as easy to enjoy
as a rollicking, straight-forward space adventure as to appreciate its brilliant satire of military jingoism and U.S. foreign policy.
But while scholars struggle to separate the pedestrian from the erudite, the one consistency in his work is Verhoeven's interest in what makes us human. Whether it's what frees his characters from the restrictive society of
, Verhoeven's greatest contradiction is his secular portrayal of the human soul, which he sees as spectacularly transcending the mundane even while remaining achingly vulnerable. It's these conflicting representations - the body and the disembodied - that allow for a clearer understanding of the cinema of Verhoeven.
(There's no good place for this to get mentioned, but this article is just as much a tribute to Gerard Soeteman, whose collaboration with Verhoeven marks one of the great longtime director-screenwriter teams in the tradition of Roman Polanski/Gérard Brach and Luis Buñuel/Jean-Claude Carrière, and Ed Neumeier for his amazing work on
In Verhoeven's films, the body is a dangerous thing. It's the reason many of his characters are targeted, either for the flesh parades of
. For the same reasons, the body is also a weapon. Murphy's mechanical makeover turns him into an immaculate instrument against the same corrupt system that restructured his anatomy; likewise, Rachel Stein's more cosmetic restoration into leggy blonde "Ellis de Vries" in
allows her to strike back against oppressors responsible for wiping out her previous identity. At the end of the day, the body is what Verhoeven's characters are left with; how they use it and how others abuse it is what defines them.
This is a touchy subject to bring up, but one that is absolutely vital
to understanding Verhoeven's work: his depiction of sexual assault. In
the early films especially, his approach seems almost offensively
flippant. In Turks Fruit, Erik's way of breaking through the emotional
barrier his sadistic mother-in-law has built around Olga is to force
himself on his sleeping wife until she responds to him, literally a
rape scene you're meant to cheer for (or at least generally approve
of). Virginal Keetje Tippel's transition from naïve child to womanhood
is marked by her playfully producing shadow puppets on the wall only
to be interrupted by the silhouette of an erect penis, and subsequent
assault by her amorous boss. Infamously, in Flesh + Blood, chaste
princess Agnes allows herself to "get into" her defilement by Steven,
effectively seducing him so that he'll protect her from being
gang-raped by the rest of his outlaw crew (subsequently she falls in
love with him). And in Spetters, violent gang-rape awakens Eef to his
tenaciously closeted homosexuality.
It's not hard to see why this "rape as epiphanical healing" angle
might be considered offensive: even in the case of Showgirls' most
gritty and unsensationalized depiction of sexual assault (the gang
rape of Molly), the event arguably leads to a positive outcome, as it
abruptly sobers Nomi to the reality of her descent into the cold,
conspiratorial world of exploitation.* And in his book Jesus of
Nazareth, Verhoeven states he would have opened his intended film
about the life of Jesus with Mary being raped by a Roman soldier.
Which makes perfect sense: what's a better case of violent sexual
assault resulting in something "positive" than a rape leading to the
birth of the messiah? Further clouded by the fact that lead males Erik
and Steven - and later Nick Curran in Basic Instinct and Sebastian
Caine in Hollow Man - are the ones committing the sexual assaults,
what exactly are we supposed to think about all this?
Needless to say, Verhoeven is staunchly anti-rape. But he also accepts
sexual assault as an ugly reality, one even more common in the
historical eras represented in Keetje Tippel, Flesh + Blood and, yes,
the time of Christ. To obscure this fact would be dishonest, the kind
of censorship utilized by the government of Starship Troopers when the
smart bug is "raped" by the giant phallic prod at the end of that
film, to hide who the real invaders are. In Verhoeven's films the body
is constantly under attack, and rape being the most literal form of
bodily assault is represented in all its ugliness. Again, it's the
reaction of the individual and how they move on from the assault that
determines their character.
These issues got a full-length study in Elle, a film that opens with a brutal rape which remains the central focus of every scene involving lead character Michèle Leblanc (in other words, every scene of the film). The wordless assault is the first thing Verhoeven tells us about Michèle, but throughout the film he and Huppert reveal why she reacted the way she did and how she regains the control that's been taken from her. Unapologetic in its button-pushing frankness, Elle confirms that he's still interested in exploring these complicated ideas late in his career.
* Actor William Shockley, who plays the creep who gets shot in the junk by Robocop during an attempted gang rape, also plays Andrew Carver, the sleazeball celeb who gets the shit kicked out of him by Nomi after initiating the gang rape in Showgirls, making Verhoeven the only director I can think of to have a "go-to rapist" for his films.
Part of what compels Verhoeven males to sexual assault is the threat of emasculation or castration: the older, damaged Nick Curran feels dominated by virile young Catherine Tramell, so he engages ex-girlfriend Beth in rough sex, just to give one example.** Often the threat is merely imagined, like the paranoid Gerard in
The 4th Man, but it becomes very real in the case of Rien in
Spetters, paralyzed from the waist down and unable to perform. One Verhoeven visual that always sticks out for me occurs during a New Year's party in the middle of the "
Robocop coming into consciousness" POV montage: a no-doubt inebriated female scientist leans down and gives an immobile Murphy a sloppy kiss, smearing lipstick across his field of vision. Forced to endure this, Murphy has become an embodiment of this anxiety, the loss of masculinity. The anxiety isn't always insubstantial: a weapon-of-choice for strong females in Verhoeven's films is an intimidating phallic blade, good for turning the tables on unsuspecting creeps and brainwashed secret agent "husbands."
** I'd submit that the male characters also feel emasculated by Verhoeven's undermining of his own adreniline-infused action scenes, but that's a more complicated topic we won't go into here.
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Robocop
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| Wat Zien Ik |
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| The Fourth Man |
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| The Hitchhiker: The Last Scene |
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| Showgirls |
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| Elle |
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| Total Recall |
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| Basic Instinct |
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| Turks Fruit |
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| Spetters |
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| Robocop |
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| Elle |
FEMALE BODY
If anybody knows Paul Verhoeven for anything, it's the "flash" from
Basic Instinct. There have been more iconic film images over the
years, but very few have managed to impress themselves upon the minds
of filmgoers with quite the blunt efficiency as when Catherine Tramell
parts her legs for a split second and decimates every fragment of
macho posturing in that testosterone-heavy interrogation room.
Gratuitous? Perhaps. Dominating? Absolutely. Verhoeven has great
respect for the power of the female body and its potential
proficiency: his last film
Black Book is all about a woman strong
enough to turn her perceived vulnerability into strength, and
characters in every film from Wat zien ik to
Showgirls use their
natural assets to turn towering he-men into trembling puddles of
insecurity. I don't think there's much need to defend the tastefulness
of nudity in the director's films, since almost all shimmers of skin
are in service of the person showing it.
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| Basic Instinct |
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| Black Book |
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| Flesh + Blood |
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| Showgirls |
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| Total Recall |
PUBLIC HUMILIATION
Since Verhoeven's characters use their sexuality against society,
society strikes back with humiliations that are largely sexual in
nature. The subjects are often stripped of their clothing (Starship
Troopers, Black Book) or forced to endure some other form of sexual
defamation, like Erik being forced to watch his wife seduced by
another man in front of everyone they know in Turks Fruit. Usually
it's carried out by those closest to the hero: the police turning on
Robocop, Ellis' own countrymen disgracing her in Black Book - no
collective can be trusted. Again it's all about characters inverting
the assault to eventually turn bodily abuse into personal strength:
Nomi Malone is shamed on stage by being instructed to apply ice to her
nipples during her audition in Showgirls, only to later apply lipstick
to them when she's dressed up for her seduction-revenge. Public
humiliation is sexual assault perpetrated by the majority to crush the
individual, and like the rape victim it's up to the individual to not
let it break them.
Of course, the commonly-accepted escape from a broken body is via a
transcending spirit. But Verhoeven doesn't buy into salvation; in his
mind it's a fantasy that undermines the ordeal of very real suffering.
Verhoeven's interest in religion (which I'll get to in Part II) is
specific to the passion of Christ and his suffering on the cross.
Hence, lots of hand wounds. In
Robocop, not only is Christ-figure
Murphy's right hand very methodically targeted and blown to
smithereens during his "crucifixion" - later, when his fellow cops
turn against their savior, there's a very specific close-up of his new
android hand being shot as well. Others inflicted by similar wounds
are typically supporting, almost peripheral characters (Keetje's
co-worker at the dye-works factory, Steven in
Flesh + Blood, Pvt. Ace
Levy) who seem like flawed individuals at first but endear themselves
to the audience via humility reached through noble suffering.
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The Fourth Man
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Keetje Tippel
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| Flesh + Blood |
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Starship Troopers
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| Robocop |
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| Robocop |
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| Elle |
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Basic Instinct
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BROKEN BODY
Similar to fear of emasculation, loss of control is akin to death.
Very few of Verhoeven's characters recover from it, particularly Rien
in
Spetters, whose future as a champion motorbike racer is instantly
dashed by an accident that leaves him paralyzed from the waist down;
finding no salvation through spiritual healing, he's trapped inside
his physical prison. Just as quickly as Rien was rising in his
community, he's cast aside. The fact that OCP can turn
Robocop off,
literally freezing his body, is demonstrative of Verhoeven's theme of
the individual stifling under an oppressive controlling order.
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| Flesh + Blood |
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| Robocop |
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| Speeters |
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| Turks Fruit |
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| Hollow Man |
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| Total Recall |
HEADSHOTS
Since Verhoeven's violent deaths are often squib-happy affairs with
chests exploding in a barrage of gunfire, a bullet to the head is a
rare and interesting thing. Sometimes the murder turns out to only
exist inside the shooter's head, like the fantasy killing that opens
Turks Fruit and the three significant deaths via headshot in
Total
Recall, a film about "opening your mind," which may or may not
actually be happening (and more like than not isn't). The headshot
demises of Nilsen in
Basic Instinct and Smaal in
Black Book are
treated as mysteries where the audience doesn't see the face of the
killer (in the case of Nilsen I'm not sure it's ever 100% determined
exactly who shot him), suggesting the destruction of a person's mind
to be the most cowardly of all violent acts.
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| Basic Instinct |
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| Black Book |
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| Starship Troopers |
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| Turks Delight |
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| Total Recall |
WAVE OF MUTILATION
Anyone who's seen
Starship Troopers knows that those who die instantly
of headshots in a Verhoeven movie are the lucky ones. He likes to take
most of his poor characters apart a piece at a time, often anonymously
in his war movies (
Soldier of Orange,
Flesh + Blood,
Starship
Troopers) to show that, in order for the larger body of the government
to succeed, the smaller parts of the soldier's body is scattered amid
the scorched earth. The vulnerability of the flesh is never more
evident than when it so easily, and miserably, falls to pieces.
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Soldier Of Orange
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| Flesh + Blood |
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Robocop
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| Total Recall |
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| Starship Troopers |
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| Starship Troopers |
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The Fourth Man
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GORE
If somebody falls, it’s not just 'bang' and he's dead. I always
thought it was so bad to die, and it's part of my, let's say,
criticism of this universe, that it is so extremely violent. To a
large degree, it is me roaring against creation. - Paul Verhoeven
When he made his splash in Hollywood, Verhoeven became the latest
action director to have his work fall under scrutiny for its excessive
and graphic violence (his case certainly wasn't helped by the director
joining forces with Caroloco in the 90's). While the action of
Robocop
and
Total Recall is expertly crafted to be as thrilling as possible,
the over-the-top blood and guts draws a visual connection to moments
in his earlier work:
Keetje Tiippel selling her body for the first
time while her pimp-mom watches a butcher carve up a slab of beef. The
three stripped pig bodies that represent the hapless
pigs-to-the-slaughter husbands in
The 4th Man. Whether the body is
destined to be sold on the street, mauled by a lion or blown away by
ED-209, in the Verhoeven world it's treated like cheap meat, stripped
of the soul that Verhoeven seeks in all his films.
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Keetje Tippel
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The Fourth Man
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Flesh + Blood
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Robocop
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| Total Recall |
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Soldier Of Orange
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| Black Book |
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Basic Instinct
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| Starship Troopers |
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| Hollow Man |
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| Elle |
ROAD ACCIDENTS
When Verhoeven characters place their fragile bodies in or on moving
metal, only bad things can occur (unless of course the one driving is
already made of metal, hence the many serene Monte Hellman-helmed
second unit shots of
Robocop cruising the Dallas - sorry, Detroit -
highway at dusk). What's weird is that a grisly scene involving a vat
of toxic waste during the climactic gunfight in
Robocop refutes
Spetters' suggestion that being paralyzed from the waist down is the
worst possible result of a vehicular collision.
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| Turks Fruit |
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Spetters
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| The Fourth Man |
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| Robocop |
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| Elle |
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Basic Instinct
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| Total Recall |
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| The Hitchhiker: "Last Scene" |
SKELETONS
Sometimes, Verhoeven likes to literally pull off the skin to remove
the
flesh + blood and see what's underneath, and to reveal one of the
concepts that interest him the most: the body without a soul. This
fascination is obviously what interested him in directing
Hollow Man,
although it couldn't really sustain a full film - the concept was
always more interesting when examined briefly within the movie.
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| Hollow Man |
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| Keetje Tippel |
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| Total Recall |
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| Turks Fruit |
FOOD
Filming is a basic necessity of life. Something like eating. - Paul Verhoeven
Food is the stuff of life, what keeps us going, and what we put in our
bodies is of particular interest to Verhoeven in his study of what
makes us human. Any given sustenance can be condemning, as the
plague-ridden water that poisons the outlaw gang in
Flesh + Blood. It
can also be literally life-saving, like the chocolate Ellis scarfs
down to counteract an insulin overdose in
Black Book (a moment that
recalls condemned cancer patient Olga gorging on Turkish delight) and
Hauser hiding a tracer in some chocolate and feeding it to a rat to
shake off his deadly pursuers in
Total Recall. And speaking of sweets,
stuffing fancy chocolate in her mouth marks Keetje's transition into
high society, just as horse eyes and dog food-synthesized croquettes
stand for the figurative scraps thrown to the lower middle class
outsiders of
Turks Fruit and
Spetters, respectively (of course, dog
food can also make certain champagne-swilling showgirls nostalgic for
their more honest pre-glam roots).
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| Black Book |
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| Wat Zien Ik |
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Total Recall
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Keetje Tippel
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Turks Fruit
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Spetters
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Showgirls
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Robocop
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| Flesh + Blood |
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| Turks Fruit |
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| Starship Troopers |
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| Elle |
HOMOSEXUALITY
Another area that polarizes Verhoeven's audience is his depiction of
gay and bisexual characters: is it sensitive or sensationalized? It's
certainly a heterosexual view of homosexuality - fascinating, exotic,
even perceived as predatory - and the gay rights activists who
famously picketed the production and screenings of
Basic Instinct may
have had a slightly more justified response than those who objected to
William Friedkin's
Cruising (although to be fair, it was written by
Joe Eszterhas). Which isn't to suggest Verhoeven is insensitive or
intolerant towards gays: his recurring image of same-sex couples on
the dance floor is always intensely erotic, and as bizarrely as
Spetters refers to homosexuality, it's unflinching in its depiction of
gay trysts.
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| Basic Instinct |
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| Flesh + Blood |
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| The Fourth Man |
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| Showgirls |
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| Soldier Of Orange |
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| Spetters |
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| Elle |
GENDER NEUTRALITY
Despite the director's heterosexual viewpoint and the very clear line
in the sand he draws between aggressive females and frustrated males,
there's a hint of equality suggested by his females with male
characteristics (androgynous Christine in
4th Man, butch Lewis in
Robocop) and males with female characteristics (the crossdresser of
Wat Zien Ik, Quaid's disguise in
Total Recall). On the other hand, the
unisex locker room of
Robocop and unisex shower of
Starship Troopers
are two examples of one of Verhoeven's ultimate concerns: such sexless
interaction is considered natural in a reality where human bodies are
mere commodities rather than living, lusting husks of human energy.
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| Wat Zien Ik |
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Turks Fruit
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| The Fourth Man |
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| Robocop |
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| Robocop |
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| Starship Troopers |
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| Total Recall |
