A Hidden Life (2019)

Christ would never say this is what he wanted. This swindle.
We've betrayed him, turned it all around.
When people walk in, they look up, they imagine that if they'd lived back in Christ's time, they wouldn't have done what the others did, they would've stood by him, they wouldn't have run like his friends did. They look up and dream...
I present his life and the lives of his followers, and others will look up and sympathise, they will be moved by their stories, and they'll imagine that doing this will benefit them in eternity.
I don't think Christ would have liked a man to throw away his time by painting him. These paintings only create sympathy, they create admirers. They don't create followers.
You know why I became a painter? So I wouldn't have to follow him.
I just show how others did. I live off their lives, I make a living presenting their suffering. And still, one needs a purity to create...how can I show what I haven't lived? I'm a fool.
Portraying how the thruth suffers doesn't incite persecution, it's simply an aesthetic performance, it doesn't put the audience under any obligation. I help them dream, to pass a quiet hour. All their goodness, lost in wishes.
Suppose there were a fire and, instead of helping, one took it all quite calmly so that later on, one could travel around and describe the horrors of this fire, how dreadfull the cries were of the man who burned to death inside, whom one could have rescued had one not been occupied with painting the whole situation. Or watching it.

We live in a world without God, left to ourselves.
We play at Christianity the way children play at guns. The point is to look faithful. True faith would bring persecution, misery.
Christ's life is a demand, but we don't want to be reminded of it, so we don't have to see what happens to the truth...
We live in times, when unthruth forces the thruth out, when your life might be demanded of you. A darker time is coming when men will be more clever. They won't fight the thruth, they'll just ignore it, pretend they don't hear.
What this age needs is someone who teaches men to honor their souls. One they put to death. It would make them afraid for themselves. Self-sacrifice seems an act of insanity.
If you follow him, it will go the same way it went with him.
To the degree you follow him to that degree you'll suffer abuse.

Though probably today Christ wouldn't be put to death, just ridiculed.
The world is so sly, so cunning. There are no human beings anymore. No lovers. We belong to nobody. To everybody. Demoralised. All. Nothing is God's. All is man's. We've closed each other in. So afraid somebody else might be lordly and splendid, when we can't be. Determined no man shall shine like the sun.

I show the suffering of the saints. But I don't suffer myself. Some day I might have the courage to venture. Not yet...Some day I'll paint the true Christ.
Who holds the Keys to death's kingdom, Lord of the creation, who was and is and shall be.

Verhoeven schreef:
Toen A Hidden Life nog Radegund heette.

Verhoeven schreef:
Waarschijnlijk volgende maand in de Pathé te zien tijdens het IFFR.

John Milton schreef:
Het is weer die gehate tijd van het jaar, screener-season. Ben benieuwd hoeveel stemmen er hier gaan komen daardoor de komende weken.