"Cinema Sunday" is on as scheduled this weekend at the Reichhold Center for the Arts, with an Academy Award-winning 1997 drama out of The Netherlands as the offering.
"Karakter" (in English, "Character"), set in Rotterdam in the 1930s, is the story of a young man caught up in a web of financial and psychological entanglements with his estranged, vindictive father.
The film, directed by Mike van Diem, opens with the arrest of the young man, Katadreuffe, an aspiring lawyer, in connection with the killing of Dreverhaven, the city's most powerful and hated bailiff, who is his father and tormentor. Katadreuffe's version of the events leading up to the crime is recounted through a series of flashbacks during his interrogation by police.
Reviewer James Berardinelli describes the motion picture as Victorian in the Dickensian manner "with perhaps a little Franz Kafka mixed in."
Katadreuffe has been brought up in poverty and austerity by his unmarried, unaffectionate mother. After a lodger she takes in encourages the young man to better himself, Katadreuffe gets a loan and invests it in a tobacco shop. The venture proves to be a financial disaster, leaving him bankrupt. Then he discovers that the head of the bank that lent him the money is Dreverhaven.
Intoxicated by the power and prestige of the legal firm that represents him in bankruptcy proceedings, the young man decides to take up the law as a career. Borrowing money from Dreverhaven's bank to pursue law studies, he embarks on what he hopes will be a path of financial and social success. Two barriers lie in his way: his bankruptcy history and the looming presence of his father, who appears determined to ruin his career prospects.
Dreverhaven, exhibiting both malice and world-weariness, Berardinelli writes, "is tortured by inner demons and permanently scarred by the sting of his rejected marriage proposal" years earlier to Katadreuffe's mother. Politics, the reviewer says, plays "a small but important role in the film as Katadreuffe enjoys a brief flirtation with the communist movement, which stands in direct opposition to Dreverhaven and all that he stands for."
The struggle between the two men evolves into a compelling story of passion and ambition in which the failings of both are exposed, with surprising consequences.
The picture won the 1998 Oscar for best foreign-language film, the 1997 Golden Frog award from Camerimage, and the best feature award at the 1997 Netherlands Film Festival. Director van Diem won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1997 Los Angeles International Film Festival and the Grand Prix at the 1998 Paris Film Festival; he was nominated for a Golden Camera award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.
The Reichhold gates open at 6:30 p.m. Sunday and the movie begins at 7. Admission is $5 and seating is open. Popcorn, candy and soft drinks are sold on the premises.
