Jose on one of this year's Foreign Film nominees...
The steaks in Bullhead are so red that you can practically taste the blood coming out of them. The intensity of their color is such that you can’t look away whenever a piece of meat is onscreen. They look both enticing and completely disgusting which makes sense given that meat is this film's currency of choice. Director Michael R. Roskam’s debut is a dark, complex thriller that breathes new life into the coming-of-age story and the gangster drama by setting it in the unexplored world of cattle farming.
Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a young cattle farmer who is dragged unwillingly into the underworld of hormone trafficking after getting involved with a corrupt beef trader. A mysterious murder brings Jacky’s childhood friend, Diederik (Jeroen Perceval), back into his life and threatens to reveal a secret he’s been hiding for over two decades.
Roskam weaves a deceptively simple tale about the loss of innocence that works because he subverts the notions of the genre, giving us a movie that questions if the events in our past can fully determine our future. Anchored by Schoenaert’s masterful committed performance (he gained over 60 pounds of muscle for the part) the film also works as a fascinating character study. Jacky is addicted to hormones and has become a minotaur of sorts, a man who suppresses his humanity at will to let out his inner animal. Schoenaert could’ve easily relied on his character’s past to build a performance filled with quirks. Instead he interiorizes all the pain only to release it through a shattering series of confused glances. He always looks as if he’s a werewolf about to transform.
The film transforms into something more than an effective thriller. At the center of Bullhead is something else altogether, a surprising brilliant study of sexual identity. What makes someone a “man”. While other movies have explored this question through metaphors, Roskam goes to the core of the situation creating a perfect companion piece to Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In. Bullhead could’ve been merely sensationalist but is instead chilling. The director not only points out that the cruelty of violence is often unseen, but he also reveals sexism embedded in the way we speak. Children often hear their parents say they will “become men” someday but rarely understand what this truly means. Is manhood a meritocracy? Should a piece of meat really define you?
Oscar analysis: Bullhead is a surprising inclusion among this year’s Best Foreign Language Film nominees because of its disturbing plot and violence. It feels like one of those “special” movies chosen by the executive committee and as such joins the ranks of Gotz Spielmann’s Revanche and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth in terms of 'the nomination is enough of an honor given its unlikelihood to have happened in the first place'. Though Bullhead probably has no chance of winning its combination of genre awesomeness and impressive central performance make it an exemplary work of art. It will undoubtedly be remade in English in a few years.