>re: *Question of Silence* - scene in which hysterical prosecutor yells
>at female psychiatrist that it would be no different if three men had
>killed a woman, all the women women in the courtroom burst out laughing.
>..the women can kill an 'innocent' man, feel no guilt, and show
>solidarity with one another because they know that individualism and
>its morality is for them a fraudulent myth, and that 'justice' is a
>chimera...
>
>re: *Broken Mirrors* - brothel workers hunt down and kill one of their
>johns who is a serial killer of prostitutes...moreover, as in Lizzie
>Borden's *Working Girl's*, the women have only contempt for their
>clients, no 'whore with a heart theme' (i.e. *Pretty Woman*) of which
>men are so fond to be found here...Michael Hoover
Magnificent and confronting - their points, as so succinctly summarised by Michael, hit home in all their complexity, as radicalism-that-works-based-on-critique-that-can-be-made-comprehensible-of-life- that-is-recognisable. I love 'em!
And whether you be woman or not - believe me - the men are at once ordinary and horrible. I mean, eg. Spielberg's camp commandant was only ever gonna be horrible - he'd not dare tell the truth about people, that you can be horrible and ordinary. Yeah, good men living the life of men in a patriarchal order can be truly horrible.
I never said different. I just said that men and women get on better in Holland than they do in Australia, in general. They do. You may think a man should not speculate on this, but I'm pretty sure I'd like to be a woman in north-western continental Europe, especially Holland, more than anywhere else I can think of. Mebbe it's that men and women are better at making themselves clear to each other there, I dunno.
Perhaps significantly, Gorris's films are big hits in Holland - men understand and appreciate them, too. Hollywood might copy *The Vanishing*, but I bet it won't copy any Gorris films - not without robbing them of what makes them great, anyway.
Cheers, Rob.