Bullhead

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Bullhead
Original title Round head
Country of production Belgium , Netherlands
original language Belgian Dutch , French
Publishing year 2011
length 129 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Michaël R. Roskam
script Michaël R. Roskam
production Bart Van Langendonck , Wilant Boekelman , Peter Bouckaert , Patrick Quinet , Koji Nelissen
music Raf Keunen
camera Nicolas Karakatsanis
cut Alain Dessauvage
occupation

Bullhead is a drama and the feature film debut by Michaël R. Roskam from 2011 . The plot is loosely based on the murder of Belgian official Karel Van Noppen , who exposed illegal livestock practices by farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs in Belgium and who was murdered in 1995.

action

Jacky Vanmarsenille runs a flourishing cattle farm with his brother, which they took over from their father. Even as children he showed them how to increase profits with the help of illegal hormone preparations . Jacky also injects himself with hormones and has become muscular over the years. He uses it to intimidate his business partners and does not shy away from using violence. But a terrible incident slumbered in his psyche that happened to him as a child: He and his childhood friend Diederik accompanied their two fathers to the Schepers family, from whom they obtained their hormones. Jacky wandered around the yard at the appointment and noticed Lucia, the Schepers' beautiful daughter. Their older, violent brother stood in the way of the two and threatened the two boys beatings if they would even look at his sister. A little later, the two friends return to the courtyard and watch Lucia's brother and his clique. They are discovered and pursued by the young people. Diederik escapes and watches while Lucia's brother takes Jacky under his control. He pulls his pants down and smashes his testicles with two stones . Jacky has been severely traumatized since then. His parents worry whether their son will ever become a "real" man and even ask their family doctor whether Jacky could become homosexual as a result of the injury . However, the crime is not atoned for: Diederik's father is worried that the influential Schepers family will blow them up and thus “agree” that it was an accident. Jacky's father still beats up Lucia's brother and has been traumatized since then, like the culprit himself. He forbids Jacky to deal with Diederik, who then lose sight of each other.

Even though the physical damage healed after many years, Jacky suffered permanent mental damage. He has to watch his brother Eddy start a family on the common farm. When he cannot sleep at night, he wanders through the red-light district of Liege in search of his male identity , but does not dare to speak to a woman there. His unsteady life comes under further pressure when a police officer investigating the meat mafia is found murdered. This murder brings Diederik, who abandoned his friend at the time, and Jacky back together. Diederik now works more or less successfully as an informant for the investigators Eva Forrestier and Antony De Greef. Diederik, who has trouble hiding his homosexuality, approaches De Greef. He takes advantage of Diederik's feelings and puts him on the Schepers family. At the same time, he consoles him that he could only imagine a relationship after the case was closed. In the course of the investigation, Jacky becomes increasingly restless. He goes to Liège to a drugstore where Lucia works. He pretends to be a normal customer and so she doesn't recognize him at first. He follows her to a disco and tries to contact her. Lucia is not very fond of the introverted , albeit muscular, man and has fun with a friend. Jacky follows him on the way home and beats him so badly that he falls into a coma . A few days later, in a conversation with her mother, Lucia realizes who the unknown stranger was. She drives to his farm and talks to Jacky. She also notices his injury on a hand that he has taken from the argument with her boyfriend. At this very moment, she heard about the crime from a friend by phone and drove back to town as quickly as possible.

Forrestier and De Greef have now been able to achieve further successful searches. Events are now overturning. Diederik visits Jacky again and makes it clear to him that the police will search his yard in a few hours. Together they destroy the hormone preparations and release the cattle. Jacky supplies himself with further hormone preparations and seeks out Lucia. She informs the police, but lets him into her apartment anyway. When Jacky realizes that the officers will be in the apartment in a few minutes, he withdraws to Lucia's bathroom and takes large amounts of hormones there. When he is arrested and about to be taken outside in the elevator, he attacks the three officers and seriously injures them. One finally manages to shoot Jacky. In his last few seconds he sees himself once again as a teenager whose life has been thrown off course by the crime.

Awards (selection)

criticism

The FAZ likes how Roskam gradually unfolds the abysses of the protagonist and at the same time delivers "an inexorable portrait of his Belgian homeland". Roskam's film appears “like looking at the internally destroyed country through a magnifying glass”. For taz , “Bullhead is a modern Heimatfilm, and like any good Heimatfilm, it plays with the secret that has settled over the landscape and finally manifests itself as the uncanny.” She praises the landscape images and the cinemascope format that Roskam has chosen to let the “mythical form of nature come into its own”. The web portal kino-zeit.de criticizes the fact that in the last third of the film "a never-ending tirade , which is mainly expressed in the inexhaustible hatred of the Flemings for the Walloons and vice versa" is lost.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rüdiger Suchsland: Film review: "Bullhead" like a wild bull . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 23, 2011, accessed on December 17, 2014.
  2. ↑ Andreas Busche: You are all animals . In: Die Tageszeitung , November 24, 2011, accessed on December 24, 2014.
  3. ↑ Beatrice Behn: Titel im Klartext , website from kino-zeit.de, accessed on December 17, 2014.