Perhaps expectations were high at the premiere of George Sluizer's nineteen-year-old, and now completed Dark Blood just too high. Because, of course, it is entirely appropriate that the Netherlands Film Festival has taken the opportunity for a fine retrospective of Sluizer, one of the Netherlands' most distinguished filmmakers with the world at large. Maker of the blood-curdling thriller Trackless (1988), as well as from documentaries in which he spoke up for the Palestinian cause.
And of course there was warm applause for the 80-year-old filmmaker who was present in Utrecht despite his frail health, where he also received the first copy of He who does not use his eyes is a lost man. In this book, he had memories of his adventurous career recorded.
But that does not detract from the fact that the - entirely in Sluizer's style - poduction history of Dark Blood overshadowed the film itself. Shortly after the success of Trackless Sluizer was sent a script by an unknown Australian. He liked the look of it, and even managed to enlist the promising young actor River Phoenix, compared to James Dean, for the role of a hermit waiting in the desert for the end of time.
Sluizer shot the film in 1993, but Phoenix died of an overdose just before completion of shooting. The insurance company confiscated the shot material. When Sluizer discovered in 1999 that it was in danger of being destroyed, he managed to get his hands on the footage again. Four years ago, Sluizer narrowly escaped death due to an arterial rupture, making the as-yet unfinished Dark Blood gained a certain urgency. Sluizer also saw the completion as an homage to River Phoenix. With support from the Film Fund and a solid crowdfunding campaign, the current final version was edited, in which the missing scenes are filled in with the help of a voice-over. A solution that works quite nicely, as it adds a sense of irony that this curious, but also somewhat contrived-looking story could do well with.
Jonathan Price and Judy Davis (with sharp sarcasm) play a bickering Hollywood couple whose car breaks down and falls into the hands of the eccentric played by Phoenix. What is then set before us in rather crude strokes is partly a classic love triangle, partly a metaphorical story with references to the atomic tests in the area and the fate of Indians. Unfortunately, the roles are given little depth and the sensuality and threat of violence are predictable and sometimes even pathetic rather than genuinely brooding or haunting. Not a story that grabs you by the scruff of the neck. When Dark Blood had simply been finished at the time, it would probably now be an interlude in Sluizer's formidable oeuvre - an intriguing but not entirely successful exercise in the B-movie genre. Though it remains nice that we can still see the film now.
As the rights have not yet been settled - that could well be a complicated legal matter - the presentation at the Netherlands Film Festival has to be done cautiously to avoid lawyers' visits. The premiere last night was for invited guests only. For the remaining curious Dark Blood at least still screened on Tuesdays, disguised as a (free) surprise film.
Leo Bankersen
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