Anton Corbijn is a famous Dutch photographer, and before the release of “The American” this month, he was known for his portraits of rock stars and for 2007’s “Control,” a movie about Ian Curtis of Joy Division. “The American,” starring George Clooney, has introduced a wider audience to Corbijn’s work, particularly in the USA, where the film won its opening weekend, selling more tickets – if you can believe it – than Sylvester Stalone’s “The Expendables.”
American critics, on the other hand, have not been altogether pleased with “The American,” which finds a mostly silent George Clooney stranded in a small Italian village, building complex rifles with his bare hands and feeling frightened for his life. A.O. Scott of the New York Times (among others) found the film lacking in substance and significant plot, though few have been able to deny the beauty of its images (in fact, Corbijn is publishing a book of still photographs he took during the shoot).
Although there are indeed plenty of shots of the Italian countryside worthy of being collected in a coffee-table book, Dutch critics have focused heavily on the erotic aspects of the film. Writing for de Volkskrant, Diederik van Hoogstraten sums up the film’s appeal:
The American is een trage, Europese film met in de VS onbekende acteurs. Normaliter zou die weinig losmaken buiten de filmhuizen in de grote steden. Maar een nieuwe thriller met Clooney waarin hij voor het eerst sinds jaren uit de kleren gaat? Dat verandert de zaak.
And there is more than Clooney’s bod (complete with a butterfly tattoo) to titillate viewers, here. Scenes that find him in bed with an Italian prostitute, as well as several shots that, as a series of still photographs, might be titled “Women’s Asses in Nature,” lend an undeniably sexy charge to the film. As Peter de Bruijn of the NRC Handelsblad puts it: Een erotische film van Corbijn, dat zou iets zijn om echt naar uit te kijken. I would have to agree.
There’s a lot to recommend this film, including a great performance by Dutch actress Thekla Reuten, and moments that feel like beautiful still photographs come to life – rain that you can almost feel, and lots of palpable silence.
