TF CLASSIC THE VANISHING

SPOILER ALERT THE Classic V ANISHING Renowned for its unforgettable ending – and unwatchable Hollywood remake – this traumatic Dutch chiller was forged in a fire of ego and genius, during a production that mirrored its on-screen intensity. Total Film unearths a tale of mafia money, fist fights and premature burial… WORDS MATT GLASBY

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102 | Total Film | July 2016 Subscribe at www.totalfilm.com/subs gamesradar.com/totalfilm July 2016 | Total Film | 103

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CLOSE UP The Vanishing, The Remake go against the system.” Then he cut back on down in a tunnel while oncoming vehicles ou start with an idea in your head and you (1993) film stock, negatives, shooting days – even crew scream past them (the glowing lights evoking take a step, then a second. Soon you realise Stalked prey: Lemorne members. “There [were] no concessions made on the Golden Egg dream; the tunnel, their later you’re up to your neck in something intense lays in wait for Saskia. Neutered beyond all recognition by studio story or acting, but on everything else there were entombment), saw the actors braving but that doesn’t matter. You keep at it for the mandate, Sluizer’s US remake has become compromises,” he said. “I told everybody, as the temperatures of -10 degrees in their summer sheer pleasure of it. For the satisfaction it might a byword for Hollywood butchery. Starring producer, if I catch anyone driving less than clothes. “It was freezing,” recalls Bervoets. “But bring you…” These are the words of Raymond Jeff Bridges in the Lemorne role and Kiefer 80mph in town they’re going to get fired. This when we saw the rushes, the whole scene was Lemorne, family man, science teacher and Sutherland as his victim, it cost 10 times was a joke, but it meant we had not a fucking blurred like pea soup. Bernard-Pierre shouted at unrepentant double murderer, but they could the Dutch version, but played out like second to lose.” the cameraman, Toni Kuhn, ‘There’s two young refer to any of the firebrands who brought this Breakdown, complete with a happy ending people in the car for hours in -10 degrees and you haunting Hitchcockian drama to the screen. in which Kiefer escapes and Bridges is killed. “I WANT YOU TO KNOW, let them do those things without getting the Indeed, as Total Film spoke to The Vanishing’s cast “Fox wanted the bad guy punished by the FOR ME KILLING IS NOT shot?’ Toni laughed a bit and then Bernard-Pierre and crew, director/adapter , police or by having a car accident,” said THE WORST THING” just hit him, he fought him, and Toni’s ear was novelist/scriptwriter Tim Krabbé and lead actor Sluizer, who removed a scene showing With a breakneck schedule, a belligerent star and pierced inside so he couldn’t hear anymore. From Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu are all compared to Lemorne caught by police from the original. a director/producer/writer/location scout with a that moment on all the shots of Bernard-Pierre Lemorne, a man who – lest we forget – drugs and “He was not allowed to live having holistic approach to his work, the shoot soon took were shot by the assistant, because Toni didn’t kidnaps a young woman, Saskia (Johanna ter committed a crime. That’s not part of its toll on cast and crew. “There were moments want to shoot with him anymore.” Steege), buries her alive, then does the same to American cinema. There has to be an when I thought, ‘I have to get out of here, this is Although it seethes with implied violence, her distraught partner, Rex (Gene Bervoets), upbeat ending.” Krabbé is a little more not normal!’” recalls Bervoets, who barely had the film only erupts into action once, when three years later, just to see if he can. succinct. “It’s trash. It’s not an adaptation a handful of film credits to his name at that point. Lemorne’s Faustian offer to Rex – follow me and “Well,” says Bervoets of his director, with of the book – they could have had the “One day I just ran away. We were shooting in find out what happened to Saskia – is met with a some affection, “it’s a little bit of a harsh word, ingredients they kept for free: the kidnap France, George had a little house there, and I was flurry of impotent blows. “At that moment George but he’s a maniac.” Said the late Sluizer (who and the burial of the girl [Sandra Bullock]. so fed up I got out of the car and started walking said, ‘Just attack him!’” recalls Bervoets. “I said, died in 2014) of his writer: “I’m not going to say But the real idea I can claim any originality until I was all alone, in the middle of nowhere. ‘I can’t do that, let’s rehearse.’ Normally you Lemorne has some of Tim Krabbé’s character, for is that the hero dies just to know what They had to come and look for me. At that rehearse a scene like that. I just can’t beat a guy, but he does [laughs]… I’m not saying killing, happened to his love, and that’s what they moment I just thought, ‘I don’t care anymore, especially because Bernard-Pierre was very but he also has an extreme way of thinking.” did not use. They just kept the wrapping and they can do whatever they want.’” strong. Then Bernard-Pierre said, ‘Come on, boy, Says Bervoets of Donnadieu: “Bernard-Pierre they threw out the contents. They raped the It wasn’t the only time Bervoets found himself why don’t you attack me? Attack me! Come on, was like a dictator on set.” Perhaps the greatest story, they raped the whole idea.” out in the cold. An early scene in which the attack me! Oh you’re a sissy, you can’t do it!’ mystery of this methodical puzzle that slots protagonists’ car runs out of petrol and breaks He got me so mad that I just kicked him and >> awfully, inexorably, into place was that (almost) no one was hurt during filming. “It was like shooting a documentary of our lives at that the movie’s better than the book.” Certainly moment,” recalls Bervoets, the only surviving Krabbé’s narrative skill cannot be overestimated Love story: The original actor who could bear to be interviewed for this – the movie pulses with metronomic revelations re-unites the lovers in feature. “I needed people who could open the which double and redouble in significance as we, an alternative way to the Hollywood formula. door to hell and not be afraid to step over the and Rex, establish exactly what has befallen his line…” Sluizer explained. lost love. After the devastating, it-could-happen- to-you sequence in which Dutch holidaymaker “THE BEST PLANS CAN BE WIPED Saskia is snatched by Lemorne at a French OUT AT ANY MOMENT BY WHAT service station, the film then flips back and WE CALL FATE” forward in time, contrasting Rex’s obsessive Based on Krabbé’s 1984 novel The Golden Egg, hunt for the truth with Lemorne’s methodical named after an ominous dream of confinement MO and frighteningly mundane home life. It’s that haunts protagonists Saskia and Rex (not to not so much a thriller – we already have an idea mention the author, aged five), Spoorloos (1988), what’s going to happen – as a grim pantomime as it’s known in its native Holland, was scripted of chance and premeditation. “You can plan and by Krabbé and Sluizer. “We’re both not the plan and plan, but things will always happen easiest persons in the world,” explains the author by themselves,” rues the (remarkably affable) (brother of actor, Jeroen). “I wrote the first author. Turns out this could have been the version and we had some personal difficulties mantra for the entire shoot. and he adapted it. I have forgotten what is mine First Sluizer and Donnadieu clashed during and what is his, which is fine.” As Sluizer rehearsals in France (“Colleagues told me you remembered,“Tim is a very clever writer but he’s won’t finish the film without a broken nose,” not an easy person. I did not want to work with remembered Sluizer of his demanding lead), someone who was blaming me for having which resulted in Donnadieu being sent to stand different opinions. He can be very nasty, you in the corner “like a stupid schoolboy” for know, like wishing you, ‘Oh, you’re stupid, you bullying ter Steege. Then financing from the should die today, better than tomorrow.’” film’s Dutch distributor fell through. “For five Although he missed the premiere, Krabbé days we had zero money, not even enough to was rather more generous when he saw the final buy sandwiches,” recalled the director, whose film. “That is Tim,” said the director, resigned to solution was characteristically extreme. “I went each other’s artistic foibles after 30 years. “He to Nice, to the mafia clubs to try to get money was a monster, I could say, in one way, but he was from thieves and gangsters,” he explained. “You also an honest gentleman because he dared to say might get shot, but at least they have the guts to

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alone: the final reveal, which sees Rex, having (knowingly) drunk Lemorne’s drugged coffee, waking in a makeshift coffin in the black bowels of the earth. It’s a true gut-churner of a scene, with Rex’s shrieking laughter suggesting elation and despair doing battle in the same snapped mind. “I rehearsed it myself,” explained Sluizer. “I was tied in the box with people putting things on top of it. I wanted to see how I could move, so I knew what I could ask of the actor. I’m not claustrophobic so I don’t have any fear of getting into a box even if it’s closed – I’m not saying forever!” As usual, Donnadieu went one step further. Says Bervoets: “Bernard-Pierre asked me to get in the coffin for a shot filmed from afar. I don’t know why I did it actually because it wasn’t necessary, but he was so into his part. Buried alive: I got in and he started putting sand on the coffin, The Golden Egg but it wasn’t strong enough, so it started to crack. dream completes the terror. I remember two guys from the crew jumped into the hole and started digging to free me. If they hadn’t done that then maybe I was dead.” As Rex screams out his own name into [breaking his arm and losing two fingers]. Nobody subterranean oblivion, the final shot links else would do this, everybody would have Lemorne, his family obliviously watering the thought this, but nobody would do it, and holiday home’s garden, and a newspaper with WHAT HAPPENED NEXT he does it. That’s what makes him different.” the headline “Mysterious Double Disappearance” When Lemorne saves a little girl from drowning, over oval-shaped pictures of Saskia and Rex, GEORGE SLUIZER After a string of Hollywood his adoring daughter calls him a hero, so he sets their Golden Egg dream come true. It’s a perfect, disasters – lead River Phoenix dying halfway out to prove her hypothesis horribly wrong: hermetically sealed, ending – the only thing that through the apocalyptic (released, Real pain: “As black cannot exist without white, I logically could ever have happened – and more positive eventually, in 2012), The Vanishing US (see Donnadieu and Bervoets conceived the most horrible deed that I could than most people give it credit for. “The strength ), and the poorly received fought it out for real as envision,” he tells Rex. To this end, he thinks of the story is that even though both heroes are Close-Up Lemorne and Rex. starring Stephen Baldwin and Sadie Frost – and nothing of making his family, in Sluizer’s words, dead, you know they are both, in some higher a handful of smaller European films, Sluizer died “co-authors of the crime”, wearing his birthday way, reunited,” explains Krabbé. “Lemorne in 2014 at the age of 82. hit him and shouted ‘Action!’, and that’s the scene the everyday with the alien to appear benign. jumper while kidnapping Saskia, practising his doesn’t get caught by the police, but by himself,” that’s in the movie. I stopped when I was “Donnadieu knows how to combine something chloroform move on his youngest daughter, and says Sluizer. “He has to live with the knowledge TIM KRABBÉ The Dutch author/journalist/ exhausted, and he was so into his part he said, normal with something abnormal, something burying both his victims in the garden of their that he is capable of the worst murder chess master still crafts impeccable thrillers in character, ‘OK, now get in the car.’ Then we OK with something not OK, all with a certain holiday home. “Talk about the banality of evil,” imaginable. He builds his own invisible glass of loss and foreboding. Try 1997’s excellent heard George shout, ‘Cut!’ Bernard-Pierre’s body sense of humour and something very cruel,” said Sluizer. “That’s where he belongs.” coffin by being able to do what he does.” The Cave, filmed in 2001 as De Grot. was completely black and blue but he said, said Sluizer. “It’s a very a big palette of colours Once Saskia has become just another cold “Rex drinks the coffee because there is this ‘Fantastic! That’s how you do a fighting scene.’ which he shows in the film.” case to everyone but Rex, Lemorne taunts him battle between these two men to see who is the GENE BERVOETS This Belgian character I really kicked his ass.” Murder, to Lemorne, is not a crime of passion with a series of postcards leading to their final, strongest, and the strongest is the one who does actor continues to work throughout Europe Despite such heavy-handed tactics, Bervoets but a way to test his intellectual and moral mettle, fatal meeting. “Lemorne likes people with something that the other expects him not to,” (including a cameo in De Grot). “I’m 30 years retains a great deal of respect for Donnadieu. like Leopold and Loeb – two 1920s American perseverance,” explained the director, “and I’m says Bervoets. “Rex wants to be with Saskia. older, completely different, but directors “He wore me out, he just asked me to do students whose attempts to commit the perfect trying to say in the film that perseverance can He doesn’t care how he’s going to be with her still call me because they saw me in The something that maybe at the time I wasn’t able murder were immortalised in Hitchcock’s lead to obsession and obsession can lead to worse because he knows in a way he’s going to die, Vanishing,” he marvels. to do, but I still did it. I’m very thankful to him, Rope. In an ironic echo of Donnadieu’s method – even murder. The film itself is trying to but he wants to undergo the same thing as she he taught me things I didn’t know before. He’s an excesses, we see Lemorne wearing a sling (like determine when a quality becomes a defect. Just did. He thinks, ‘When I do this, I am stronger JOHANNA TER STEEGE Having won incredible actor who really went to hell to make Ted Bundy and The Silence Of The Lambs’ Jame like purity. My father said, ‘Oh, if you are pure than Lemorne.’ That’s something in the last a European Film Award for The Vanishing, his character work and to make other people Gumb), learning different languages – even that’s good,’ when I was a little boy. Hitler also image of the movie when you see the two eggs, ter Steege went on to feature in Robert work too.” Sluizer was equally effusive: “He chloroforming himself – to ensure his plan goes liked purity – so he killed everyone who wasn’t you see Lemorne sitting there, completely Altman’s Vincent & Theo (1990), Immortal deserves a lot of credit because I think he’s smoothly. Though most of his practice runs end pure. So the film tries to balance itself between finished, his life is done. He can’t go on. So Beloved (1994) with Jeroen Krabbé, and excellent. I would say Lemorne is the best of near-farcically (one has him sneezing, then the plusses and the minuses of obsession.” although he died, Rex won.” Paradise Road (1997) with Glenn Close. the worst killers in the last 30 years.” blowing his nose on the chloroform-drenched Twenty-eight years on, Bervoets’ memories rag, while his victim waits, unaware, in his car), “EITHER I LET HER GO ON LIVING of The Vanishing shoot are similarly bittersweet: BERNARD-PIERRE DONNADIEU “He’s “YOU CAN FIND ME LISTED they remind us of the random web of cause and AND NEVER KNOW, OR I LET HER “It was a life-lasting experience,” he says. “You become gentler with age,” laughed Sluizer IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA effect binding Saskia and Rex to their fate. DIE AND FIND OUT WHAT can’t describe it as nice, you can’t describe it as of the prolific French TV/film actor, “He’s always UNDER SOCIOPATH” Unusually, the film isn’t shy when it comes to HAPPENED. SO… I LET HER DIE” horrible, but it was both. I can see why Johanna saying, ‘Let’s do another movie together, there With his arrogant, upward-sweeping quiff and demystifying its killer, preferring to paint him as Although repeated viewings highlight Lemorne’s and Bernard-Pierre would say, ‘No way, I don’t are so many fucking stupid directors, I’m fed science teacher glasses, Donnadieu’s an amoral anomaly than an enigmatic monster. haunting pathology and the elegance of the want to talk about it anymore. It was a long time up!’” Donnadieu worked steadily until his “philosophical killer” (Krabbé’s words) is, indeed, Explains Krabbé: “Lemorne doesn’t stop where film’s chess match-like construction (Krabbé is ago. I want to bury this thing.’” TF death in 2010, aged 61. extraordinary. Twice during the film, the camera normal people stop. He discovers this when he’s a keen player, see his website, Chess Curiosities), allies him with stick insects – creatures mixing 16 years old and he jumps from a balcony first-time Vanishing viewers remember one thing The Vanishing is available on DVD.

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