The Draw (1974)

Directed by: Roland Verhavert | 83 minutes | drama | Actors: Jan Decleir, Ansje Beentjes, Gaston Vandermeulen, Gella Allaert, Bernard Verheyden, Idwig Stephane, Eddy Asselbergs, Leo Madder, Denise Zimmerman, Rudi van Vlaenderen, Johan Vanderbracht, Gilbert Charles, Werner Kopers, Marieke van Leeuwen, Roger Bolders, Maurits Goossens, Ray Verhaeghe

Stories don’t get much clearer than ‘The lottery’. In Flanders of 1833, it is determined by lottery which young men must fulfill their military service, and which do not. The chance that conscription actually leads to a battlefield is not imaginary these days: Belgium has only just fought free from the Netherlands. Fortunately, silly farmer Jan Braems (Jan Decleir) is selected by lot for military service. In exchange for a hefty sum of money (and a few pots of beer), however, he takes the place of a rich man’s son who has been drawn by lot. Braems leaves his ramshackle grandfather (Gaston Vandermeulen) and blond lover Katrien (Ansje Beentjes) behind on the land he leases. This in the belief that he can surprise them with his wealth after military service. Once stored in a barracks and dressed in uniform – blue, with red epaulettes – Braems loses his piggy bank almost immediately. Not much later he is even struck with blindness, having committed the sin of the flesh. He ends up in a military infirmary annex damn corner. Katrien and grandfather no longer receive mail from Jan. When Katrien then hears from a peddler that Jan is going badly, she decides to look for her beloved. This in spite of the local priest, who tells her with a villainous smile that Jan soldier has probably forgotten her long ago. What follows is a well-constructed story with, thanks to the last fifteen minutes of the film, a still wobbly moral.

It is precisely its simplicity that makes ‘The draw’ rewards your attention from the start: everything you see, everything that is said, matters. The events, recorded soberly and in style by director Roland Verhavert, do something for you, without being emphatically ‘advised’ here in the form of significant directing or acting (which is strong across the board). See the moment Braems lies to his grandfather; “I was drawn in.”, or the moment Katrien sees the immaculate beauty of a row of nuns clad in white: it would make you Catholic. Shortly after Braems loses his money, another soldier treats him to the whores. Whether there is a link between the two is left open to the makers. A well-placed comic note is the marching exercise of Braems and his companions: “Hay! Sprinkle! Hay! Sprinkle! Hay! Sprinkle!”. With work by the eighteenth-century composer Handel, the soundtrack in ‘De loteling’ ties in with all this. It is used as a discreet companion to the story, not as the overactive master of viewer emotions.

The art of omission and the calm hand of the narrators also work well together to bring the era to life in a believable way. They were undoubtedly helped in this by the fact that ‘De loteling’ was based on a book of the same name from 1850, by the socially committed and devout writer Hendrik Conscience. With the end, the film (after a screenplay by Nic Bal) suddenly deviates considerably from the book. Coincidence or not: especially the events in the last ten minutes arouse astonishment. It’s as if the makers couldn’t resist putting a lot of emphasis on their point after all sobriety. So much power that the point is almost unrecognizable. And that’s when the credits begin.