Like a documentary, the year of the episode flashes on the screen, followed by the voice-over narration and actual footage of historical events from that year, beginning on the geopolitical scale and swiftly narrowing down to events in Anton's front yard. The film is divided, like the book, into episodes marked by the year in which they take place. Like the book, the film is narrated in third-person by an anonymous, omniscient voice. Mulisch's plot and dialogue are faithfully rendered, of course, but more surprisingly, so is his presentation. Paradoxically, The Assault proves itself a daring film through the accuracy with which it follows Mulisch's novel. Even Anton's first wife, Saskia, bears a striking resemblance to the woman he met in jail (both are played by Monique van de Ven). Objects Anton sees physically become the objects they make him remember. With each of these historical events comes a reminder of the inescapable past it seems that nearly everything from cigarette lighters to aircraft, and nearly everyone from old neighbors to his new friend, Cor Takes (John Kraaykamp), reminds him of that terrible day long ago.
The Korean War draft, the 1956 anti-communist riots in Amsterdam, the funeral of a famous Resistance leader in 1967, and the present-day anti-nuclear movement all strike Anton close to home, figuratively and literally. But history keeps intruding upon his life. The adult Anton (Derek de Lint) tries to bury his past and his feelings. Anton is released the next day to his surviving relatives in Amsterdam, but in a sense, he never completely washes away the blood and lipstick, as hard as he tries. She kisses his forehead to comfort him, unwittingly smearing him with blood and lipstick. In the dark cell, Anton meets a woman from the Resistance who has been wounded. Within the hour, in fact, the Nazis have burned down Anton's house, slaughtered his family, and thrown him in jail.
Despite the food and fuel shortages, the almost-defeated Nazis have a minimal effect on the lives of the Steenwijk family, who try to evade history by translating Homer, reading Spinoza, and playing board games.īut Anton's illusions are shattered when a Nazi collaborator is assassinated in front of the house next door, and the neighbors move the body in front of the Steenwijk house to avoid the Nazis' wrath. As a 12-year-old boy in early 1945, Anton Steenwijk (Marc van Uchelen) lives under the shadow of the Nazi occupation of Haarlem. It was no doubt less offensive to the sensibilities of the Academy than was its closest competitor, the sex-and-violence laden Betty Blue, yet it is a daring, disturbing, well-crafted film.īased on Dutch author Harry Mulisch's novel, The Assault is the story of a Dutch man's coming to grips with history and his own past. THE ASSAULT WAS THIS YEAR'S Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film, and it's not hard to see why.
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