Borgman movie meaning

In the same black, poisoned vein as “Dogtooth” and “Funny Games” pumps Alex van Warmerdam’s “Borgman,” another darkly comic thriller about domesticity crumbling into violence and even insanity.

However, frustrations are few and far between, thanks in large part to the riveting work by Bijvoet and Minis as the drifter and the woman he claimed to know when all he needed was a place to take a bath. He takes the guest room while his team settles in the garden shed, and they slowly begin to assume roles in the life of the family.

Soon it is revealed that Camiel and his team have the ability to control people, corrupting their minds or killing them in cold blood if deemed necessary.

There, he encounters Richard Jeroen Perceval and Marina Hadewych Minis, an upper-class couple with three children. The film begins harmlessly enough, with a small mob of angry men and their dogs led by a priest carrying a shotgun. Are they appointed, as the opening quotation seems to suggest, to right society’s wrongs?

Marina and those close to her are Camiel’s playthings and Camiel is the filmmaker’s master of puppets in his deadly and seductive game of chess.

If you enjoyed Michael Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES, I highly recommend Warmerdam’s BORGMAN, as it falls somewhere on the slightly less psychotic end of the scale for such films.

BORGMAN opens theatrically in NY on June 6th, 2014 at Lincoln Plaza & IFC Center with an expanded release on June 13th & 20th, 2014

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Alex van WarmerdamAngel FilmsBloemendaalborgmanDark ComedydrafthouseDramaEpidemicFilmForeign FilmGraniet Film BVHadewych MinisJan BijvoetJeroen PercevalmovieNetherlandsNightmareNoord-HollandpsychologicalReviewsurrealThrillervagrant

An armed priest, together with two other men, drives a hobo and his companions from their underground hideouts.

It only takes a catalyst to reveal it.

At almost two hours, some of “Borgman” feels a bit too cinematically deliberate—purposefully opaque without meaning at all, even tonally. She denies it but the first crack is already in place in this relationship before he’s even in the house.

Why does he live underground? The priest and his posse appear to be hunting a vagrant who has ingeniously dug out an underground home for himself beneath the forest floor, complete with a hidden entrance and furniture. He borders on supernatural in the way he smoothly slides in and out of the family home, and he begins to influence Richard, Marina, and their children.

“Influence” is one word for it.

Are they representative of spurned innocence, unjustly cast out of a modern-day Garden of Eden? I should mention that the gentleman carrying the firearm is a priest. The three hunters at the beginning of the film might stand in for the established religious, industrial, and agricultural order, which could explained why they feel so threatened.

Richard confronts the tramp on his front step, beating him brutally. Simultaneously, Marina — an artist — falls deeper and deeper into his spell as we watch her loyalty shift. I’m good because I do this, but what they do over there is evil. Few films since PULP FICTION have provided this caliber of debatable cinematic content.

What begins as a dry, quirky tale of a homeless man rapidly escalates and transforms into something more sinister.

Pay close attention to these key moments in the film and enjoy discussing them with fellow viewers afterwards. Like a religious parable designed to present more questions than answers, “Borgman” can sometimes frustrate but it is an accomplished piece of work, driven by a uniquely malevolent tonal balance and two fantastic central performances.

Camiel operates with a malevolent modesty that is disarming. The vagrant’s name is Camiel Borgman, played by Jan Bijvoet, and he will prove to be much more complex than he appears at face value.