A new chapter for Verhoeven

NEW YORK -- No director more gleefully embodies the excesses and paradoxes of Hollywood than Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven.

Known for the tawdry thriller "Basic Instinct," sci-fi romps such as "Total Recall" and "RoboCop," and the campy Joe Eszterhas-penned megabomb "Showgirls," Verhoeven has long courted controversy (and ridicule) for his sex- and violence-riddled movies. Given the spectacle of many of his big-studio outings, it is easy to forget there's a real artist at work behind the scenes. With his rollicking new World War II adventure drama "Black Book," however, Verhoeven has accomplished a rare feat: fusing arthouse smarts with multiplex thrills.

"I felt after 'Hollow Man' that I should change gears," says Verhoeven, 68, during a recent interview in midtown Manhattan, "because I felt that I had got to a position I never wanted to be in -- having done something that felt a bit empty to me."

Reteaming with screenwriter Gerard Soeteman , his collaborator on early films such as "The Fourth Man" and "Flesh + Blood," Verhoeven returned to Holland to make "Black Book," his first Dutch-language feature in more than two decades.

"Artistically, of course, it was paradise," Verhoeven says of filming in Europe, "because nobody told me 'This is too violent or too sexy, too many breasts, too much this, too much that.' We had the script, and the producers said, 'Good, let's shoot this.' "

Set in Holland in 1944, "Black Book" -- which was nominated this year for a best foreign language Oscar -- tells the story of Rachel Rosenthal (Carice van Houten ), a beautiful young Jewish singer who narrowly escapes capture by the Nazis while attempting to flee to liberated Belgium with her family.

After dyeing her hair blond and changing her name to Ellis De Vries, the Jean Harlow look-alike is enlisted by members of the Dutch resistance to seduce Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch ), a high-ranking but politically moderate Gestapo officer who seems more interested in his stamp collection than Hitler's schemes. Naturally, Ellis and Müntze fall in love, one of many bold ironies in a high-energy film filled with topsy-turvy revelations.

Inspired by true events, "Black Book" is a wartime thriller Verhoeven had been trying to develop since 1980, but his research on the Occupation actually began in the late '60s, when he directed a TV documentary about Dutch Nazi leader Anton Mussert . In 1977, he delved further into the period with "The Soldier of Orange," a dramatic biopic about the exploits of famed resistance hero Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema.

Quite provocatively, "Black Book" rejects the patriotic valor of typical war films (including the director's own) with its pointed inversion of heroes and villains. Given its revisionist slant, Verhoeven says he was "amazed" investors from Germany, England, Holland, and Belgium chose to fund his project.

"I think perhaps people felt that, in some way, the ambiguity that's in the script, the moral ambiguity might have something to do with the political situation in the world, and especially provoked by American politics."

Although Verhoeven states he and Soeteman had no conscious desire to find parallels with the U S occupation of Iraq -- "We never saw [the story] as a metaphor, clearly, because it was history" -- one scene of Rachel's humiliation at the hands of her countrymen was shot in the immediate wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

"In 2005, the photos had been in the newspaper media all over the world," Verhoeven recalls. "So I think we were well aware that we were shooting something in Dutch terms that had a strong resemblance with the American situation. But the scene had been there, in my head, since 1966."

Born in 1938, Verhoeven witnessed the brutality of war first hand as a child; he has often recounted how glimpsing the remains of downed British pilots near his home had a profound effect on his view of the world. Clearly, in matters of the flesh, he delights in irreverent shock (see the gratuitous gore in "Starship Troopers" or the abrupt finale of "The Fourth Man") and pervy titillation (most notorious is Sharon Stone's crotch shot in "Basic Instinct," which is duplicated with a peroxide twist in "Black Book").

Verhoeven has often been criticized for these transgressions, even boycotted, but he is bluntly unapologetic about the prominence of such taboo images in his movies, alluding to the 17th-century Dutch painters who, in some oblique way, taught him that "art has to do with reality." Clarifying his point, he says, "We are an extremely violent species. I think we killed about 150 million people in the last century. And we all do sex. Why not report about that?"

Verhoeven's gung-ho willingness to take risks is a quality that appealed greatly to Koch, co-star of "Black Book," who familiarized himself with the director's pre-Hollywood output after accepting the role of Müntze.

"He is very pure in his energy," Koch says. "He makes things physical. You can feel it as an audience as well. His films are authentic, sort of pure and strong -- even if there are little mistakes, he doesn't care so much. He just wants to spit it out."

That viscerality comes across in "Turkish Delight" (1973), a sexed-up "Last Tango in Paris"-style drama for which Verhoeven earned his first Oscar nomination. And in "Spetters" (1980), about the on- and off-track rivalry of horny young motocross riders, the back-alley rape of a racer by a gang of male prostitutes is surprisingly cathartic rather than traumatizing. All of which made Koch "curious and nervous" about working with the director: "But then I told myself, OK, jump in, whatever it will be, I think you can trust that man."

Despite his reputation as a mass-entertainment specialist, Verhoeven's last three films were commercial disappointments. Yet both "Starship Troopers" and "Hollow Man" have inspired direct-to-video sequels he consulted on, while "Showgirls" continues to provoke heated discussion on the paradoxes of "bad filmmaking." (Verhoeven was not involved in the making of "Basic Instinct 2," which topped many critics' "worst-of" lists last year.)

One reason his films seem to endure, while monster-budget spectacles by the likes of Roland Emmerich ("The Day After Tomorrow") and producer Jerry Bruckheimer ("Armageddon") wind up in the dustbin may be their clever subtexts and satiric skewering of cultural sensibilities.

Asked if he sees himself as a social critic, Verhoeven responds, "Yeah. And that's basically one of the reasons, with 'Hollow Man,' where I felt I could not personalize that movie. I could not project into it what I thought was there. If you make these kind of big movies, there [must be] an undercurrent of something else. Otherwise it's just entertainment alone."

Damon Smith can be reached at damon.g.smith@gmail.com.

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a profile of filmmaker Paul Verhoeven in the April 8 Movies section incorrectly stated that his film "Black Book" was nominated for a best foreign-language film Oscar. While it was submitted by the Netherlands for the award, it was not nominated. In addition, the title of Verhoeven's film "Soldier of Orange" was misstated.)