Het zwijgen

André van der Hout and Adri Schrover, who previously came to Rotterdam with The Arm of Jesus, have made with their second film a Dutch murder mystery in which archive material again plays a central role. Victor Dreisen, a rather lazy assistant researcher at the Amsterdam Institute for Folk Culture, inherits a cottage from a forgotten uncle near the village of Koekange in the province of Drenthe. It is a region of spooky fen lands, misty canals and silent men. So he submits a proposal to his boss (who seems to have walked out of a novel by Voskuil) for a research project into local songs that describe murders from the past. When he settles down in the derelict house, he soon finds out how every hamlet has its own murder to sing about. He meets Geesje, a young woman who knows a large number of murder songs off by heart. His scientific principles are soon in danger. When Dreisen finds out that his own cottage was the scene of a triple murder around 1920, he becomes entangled with an increasingly hostile and mysterious community. In comparison with The Arm of Jesus, Song from the Other Side is more realistic in its tone, a realism that is primarily used to build up the tension. For many Dutch people, the film will be almost unrecognisable, the modern era seems to have left this area of Drenthe so untouched. Exotic and archetypal: ‘The past – they do things differently there.’ But for those who seek, the past comes to life… (SdH)

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