The Lion of Flanders (1985)

Directed by: Hugo Claus | 95 minutes | drama | Actors: Frank Aendenboom, Bert André, Piet Balfoort, Theu Boermans, Chris Boni, Hans Boskamp, ​​Ronnie Commisaris, Jules Croiset, Bart Dauwe, Jo De Meyere, Vic de Wachter, Ilma De Witte, Jan Decleir, Karel Deruwe, Herbert Flack, Paul Geens, Daisy Haegeman, Jules Hamel, Blanka Heirman, Guido Horckmans, Eric Kerremans, Alain Keytsman

One summer day in 1302, a band of Flemish insurgents defeated the armored army of the King of France, Philip the Fair. Until then Philip had been allowed to count the county of Flanders as his territory and had imposed increasingly heavier taxes on prosperous Flanders. The battle became known as the Battle of the Golden Spurs, and was immortalized in 1838 by Hendrik Conscience in his romanticized (and nationalistic) chivalric novel, ‘The Lion of Flanders’. The book became a huge success, since then Conscience has been known in Flanders as ‘the man who taught his people to read’. In 1985 Hugo Claus builds on that success as director of ‘De Leeuw van Vlaanderen’. Claus (also author of ‘Het Verdriet van België’) made, in his own words, “a spectacular film for fifteen-year-old boys”. In other words: he wanted to make a film for people who are willing and (still) able to look at the world through the eyes of a boy. Unfortunately, partly due to a meager budget, the film is only a shadow of comparable historical epics from Hollywood in boys’ eyes. What really kills the film is the hastily raked story. With almost inimitable giant leaps, it makes its way through Flemish history.

The film begins when the Count of Flanders (Robert Marcel) travels with his retinue to Philip the Fair (Peter te Nuyl) to protest against his constant tax increases. Roughly speaking, the sequel means that Philip sends his army to Flanders to put things in order there and thus enter into battle with the Flemish population. In France, the Count of Flanders encounters a king dressed in a ludicrous purple cloak and conceived with the appearance of a squinting snowy owl. When Philip speaks, he has the mimicry of a ventriloquist dummy. His wife, the queen, is Joanna of Navarre (“Naavaaraa”, says Johanna herself). Josine van Dalsum gives shape to her role as queen with sentences such as “Come on man, tell your king!” The Queen mainly comes across as a screaming shrew with the impact of a screaming toddler. It doesn’t get much better, in the rest of this ‘history’ supported by a soundtrack that seems intended to evoke PI Magnum and his Ferrari.

That and other spectacle, however, is not forthcoming. The uninspired battle scenes in ‘De Leeuw…’ never exceed the studied staging that preceded it. Archers fire their arrows as if it were a symbolic act. (While at other times blood flows from heads and arms in fountains.) The ‘pretending’ applies here to too many characters. Scenes that – presumably – should do something for you are played out so clumsily or forcibly that you probably take them for notice. Like when a mother kills her daughter to protect her from rape. At a public hanging, there is a hoot from the audience, so literal and emotionless that it can make you chuckle in surprise: “Boo! Boo! Boo!” In other scenes, everyone sits neatly facing the camera. That may be customary on stage (otherwise the actors will be unintelligible), on the silver screen it kills what is alive, and static that has to move. It can be a conscious ‘statement’: elsewhere in the film food is spread out on a table and lit up as if it had just been painted in a still life.

Then there are the costumes in ‘The Lion of Flanders’. Just when the carnival outfit of the mayor of Bruges has been banished from your mind, a horse dressed in shiny latex appears on the horizon, ridden by a knight in a literally dazzling metallic outfit: Liberace in ‘Medieval’ attire. By then it will be clear that ‘De Leeuw van Vlaanderen’ is justifiably an old-fashioned boy’s film, where hyperbole reigns, where white fights against black and where – whether or not due to the youthful enthusiasm of old Claus – telling a good story takes some time. the eye is lost. It remains to spot famous authors in this film: both Ischa Meyer and Adriaan van Dis perform a cameo here.