San Diego Reader

Based on the classic (so we are told) Dutch novel of the same name, to do with a domineering father in absentia and the literal poor little bastard who fights all his life into his early adulthood to free himself. The freeing takes place first thing -- "Farewell forever. You no longer exist for me" -- and the fighting is recounted in flashback, with first-person narration from a police interrogation room. The post-WWI period affords an excuse for any and all manner of Expressionistic or silent-cinematic exaggeration and simplification: dismal blue-gray atmosphere, overwrought camera, caricatured characters. An intellectual excuse, that is, not an emotionally persuasive one. A pedantic one. With Jan Decleir, Fedja van Huet, and Betty Schuurman; written and directed by Mike van Diem. 1997.

— Duncan Shepherd

• Rated R

This movie is not currently in theaters.