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The Assault
Release Date: 1987
Ebert Rating: ***
By Roger Ebert Feb 27, 1987
"The
Assault" 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 into the night 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 (Derek de Lint) 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.
"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 20
years after the night of the assault. Anton - happily married, a father,
successful, content - is suddenly visited by a great vastation. 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 "Assault" (one of this year's foreign film Oscar nominees)
is a film that asks important questions and examines them fearlessly, it is
not as effective as it could be. The film covers nearly 40 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.
Cast &
Credits
Anton
Steenwijk: Derek De Lint
Anton As A Boy: Marc Van Uchelen
Truus Coster: Monique Van De Ven
Cor Takes: John Kraaykamp
Cannon Films Presents A Film Directed And Produced By Fons Rademakers.
Screenplay By Gerard Soeteman, Based On The Novel By Harry Mulisch.
Photographed By Theo Van De Sande. Edited By Kees Linthorst. Music By Jurrian
Andriessen. In Dutch With English Subtitles. Running Time: 149 Minutes.
Classified PG.
©
2008 rogerebert.com
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