Flanders (2006)
2/10
Pretentious artsy...something, with bad writing, bad direction and bad acting
4 March 2007
No, really. I have no idea how I managed to watch this thing to the end, but the only advice I can give you is: by all means, do not waste an hour and a half of your life watching this. I seriously don't know where to start with what's wrong with this title, maybe because there's nothing really right about it, save for one single subplot set...in a war, either in Afghanistan or Iraq (see, we don't know which war it is), involving Belgian soldiers and a female enemy combatant. Otherwise this 'movie' is a mess of randomly thrown in characters (you'll find yourself thinking 'who the hell is this?' all the time if you gather enough courage to watch the movie), pretentious artsy directing (close-up of a face followed by a wide angle shot of the landscape...throughout the WHOLE movie), a practically non-existing plot (there's three changes of settings, neither of which makes sense because we never learn anything about the characters or their motivations, or their personal stories), practically non-existing dialogs, or communication for that matter that I guess was meant to be part of Dumont's vision but just adds up to a big pile of nonsense (yeah...there's a whole lot of staring-thoughtfully-into-the-distant landscape in Flanders, especially at the scene where they're hanging out in the field). Now from a technical point of view, whoever recorded and mixed the sound probably won't find another production to work on in the next 20 years. Also, I thought about it real hard, but I couldn't come up with a rational explanation as to why the producers thought it would be a good idea not to have ANY music in this film. Especially given the fact that there's a huge gap created by the severe lack of dialog in there. Moreover...since when do Flemish people speak French? This would cause a riot in Flanders. And how is it that a bunch of soldiers are left on their own in Iraq/Afghanistan, without any supervision or contact with their base and/or commanders? Where are the PEOPLE? Military operations are conducted in strategic spots (e.g. populated areas)...so why do we have one bad guy popping randomly out of nowhere every once in a while? And the military using horses alongside tanks and Hummers? You can't be serious. Apparently, Dumont wanted to depict an ultra-realistic image of humanity, but realism does not equal incoherence.

Do not waste your time on this.
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