‘The smell of sprouts’ is an expression in Dutch denoting everything that is petit bourgeois and small-minded, and in Abel Van Warmerdam uses an abundance of fish and fishy smells to underline these traits in his characters, in whom they are exaggerated and absurd but still recognisable. In her own idiosyncratic fashion the seemingly docile mother, Duif, opposes the father's decision to turn Abel on to the streets. Throughout the film, for example, Abel is preoccupied with cutting buzzing flies in half, while his father wolfs down one copious meal after another on the grounds that: ‘We must eat well because we're not working class’. It completely throws me.’), Van Warmerdam gives his characters individual peculiarities. Without going in for detailed psychological explanations (‘I don't like psychology. Out of long dialogues between three people developed the story of Abel, the withdrawn son who is too afraid of the outside world to leave home but is finally driven out by his father. Starting from this optimistic simplicity, Van Warmerdam set to work on the scenario for Abel. Then you pick that up on the other side, splice it together and it looks as if he's going through the door.’ You shoot something, for example someone going out of a door. With the type of logic characteristic of his work, he says: ‘On the one hand it became clear how difficult film is, but on the other a kind of simplicity emerged.
Van Warmerdam's interest in cinema arose from his work on two television films made by Hauser Orkater, which included drawing the storyboards. Under the name Hauser Orkater it was to play an important part in creating an unconventional kind of theatre. He joined the group, along with his brothers Mark and Vincent (now an award-winning composer of film music). When he moved to Amsterdam he came into contact with a music group who were developing a kind of total theatre. Perhaps inspired by his father, who was a stage manager, he made theatre his hobby. After studying graphics and going to art school in Amsterdam he seemed destined to become a painter. But both sides in the debate were agreed on one point: Abel and The Northerners offered a unique view of what may be called the Dutch character.Īlex van Warmerdam was a complete novice when he became part of the film scene with his debut Abel. The slightly absurdist characters, the lengthy dialogues, the disconcerting camera work and lighting and the more than artificial design occasioned considerable confusion in a film culture in which realism, both in documentaries and features, had always played a major role. This question of its quality led to fierce debate in the Dutch film world: was it filmed theatre or pure cinema? A small output, as yet and it is for its quality rather than its quantity that we shall be considering it here.
To date he has made only two features, Abel (1986) and The Northerners (De Noorderlingen, 1992). Coming from the world of the theatre, the young Alex van Warmerdam (1952-) occupies a special place in the still not fully developed field of the Dutch feature film.