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Character study >> Mike Van Diem tackled the classic Dutch book and ended up with an Oscar by MATTHEW HAYS
But the happy moment couldn't stand in starker contrast to the tone of Karakter itself. Based on the famous F. Bordewijk novel of the same name, Karakter opens with a police investigation into the death of Rotterdam's most feared bailiff, Dreverhaven. As police interrogate their prime suspect, a prominent lawyer named Katadreuffe, they learn that he is in fact the illegitimate son of the man it appears he murdered. The film then launches into an elaborate flashback, in which Katadreuffe's tortured relationship with his cruel absentee father is relayed to the audience. By his own admittance, Van Diem's foray into Karakter, a brooding cinematic adaptation of a famous literary work set in the '20s, was unexpected and surprising. A former film critic, Van Diem entered film school and won accolades and awards for his short thriller Alaska in 1990. Then he directed the Dutch TV series Called to the Bar, a show Van Diem describes as "a cross between L.A. Law and thirtysomething." Then Van Diem found himself having dinner with his producer, when the two embarked on a fateful brainstorming session. "He had always wanted to do the novel Karakter. I asked him to let me have a shot at it. He was so surprised because I'd only done a couple of things, none of them anything like Karakter. But we started talking about it and within 30 minutes there was fire in our eyes. We said if we still liked the idea in a week, we should probably just do it."
Van Diem's original vision had Karakter as a small ensemble film. But things rapidly changed as the project developed. "It was never our intention to make a film that we could show at Cannes, or one which would one day be eligible for an Academy Award. At first we thought we'd assemble 10 actors and build a set, and make a small $1-million film. As I started to write it, the narrative structure of an epic was sort of superimposed on the novel. As we were assembling the locations [the film was shot in numerous European cities], it began growing in scale and we needed more extras and more of everything. As a director, I grew along with it. Our budget grew to between $4-5 million, which is amazing, because it looks much more expensive." Van Diem says that despite the successes of Karakter and Antonia's Line, Dutch films face many of the same obstacles that Canadian films do. "Our audiences tend to look down on the domestic industry. When I went to the Toronto Film Festival I got the sense that Canadians also don't think very highly of Canadian films. It's one of the biggest problems for the Dutch film industry. The first week that Karakter was released, the box-office results were extremely bad. But the film managed to survive, and go on and do better than survive, because the Dutch audiences liked it and word got around. Dutch audiences were surprised to see such a satisfying Dutch film. It was quite an uphill battle." Naturally, Van Diem's Oscar means better box office for the film, which is a relief for the director. He sunk some of his own money into the project to help complete it, and now he'll finally get payback for his work and investment. Also naturally, winning the coveted award supplied Van Diem with lots of Oscar stories--tales people are always dying to hear. "After we left the ceremony, our limo broke down about three blocks away from the hall. We were stuck in a not-so-great L.A. neighbourhood for about an hour. But we had lots of champagne so we were okay. Then we were driven to a restaurant, which turned out to be the wrong one. So when we finally got to the right one it was two hours later and everybody was gone. But we still had a great time." Van Diem says he's now being treated as a Dutch national hero ("I've become much bigger than Monica Lewinsky or Saddam Hussein"), but is quick to add that he feels like the Oscar was a collective achievement. "I did the film with a lot of first-timers, many of whom were students of mine. We had a huge party and about 500 people had their pictures taken with the Oscar. People were juggling it and that sort of thing, so it's got scratches on it--it's already a well-worn Oscar. That's okay, because it's everybody's Oscar. And it still looks pretty fabulous." Karakter opens next Friday, April 10
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Mike Van Diem looked overwhelmed two Mondays ago, when he stepped up to the podium to accept his Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. He was understandably charged with emotion, thanking many and struggling to find the words to express his inner joy. Karakter, his winning feature, is also his first--an enviable success story, and the second Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in a row for Holland (last year's Antonia's Line also won).
The book, which was obligatory grade-school reading for decades in Holland, presented some unusual challenges for Van Diem and his screenwriting team. "It seemed like quite the task, because it lacked a solid beginning and an end, so we had to come up with this murder mystery structure which isn't in the novel. There's no final conflict in the novel, no murder, no accusation. The father's death-defying demeanor, which was very much in between the lines of the novel, I always felt was something we should verbalize and visualize. For me personally, that's one of the most satisfying elements of the film."