The Shooting Party/Flesh + Blood

Films continue to spin off from the most recent Seattle International Film Festival. Two are opening the same day, both among the most talked-about movies at the last fest.

The Shooting Party was one of the high points of the festival, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it’s a finely wrought film, a delicate fin­-de–siecle piece that seems almost a British version of Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game.

Like that film, the main characters in The Shooting Party gather at a woodsy estate for a little games­manship – but the games are not limited to the hunting of animals. Psychological torture and sexual frolicking are among the sports practiced here.

Also like Rules of the Game, the setting is the eve of a major war – this time, World War I. The crumbling of the British Empire is played against the minor intrigues of these people, who act out in microcosm the strengths and weaknesses of the British traditions of class and order.

The other main reason to like The Shooting Party is a jewel of a performance from the late James Mason, whose swan song this film represents. His role, the central figure, gives Mason the opportunity to convey all the dignity and wisdom distilled from a distinguished career, and he does it beautifully. Even if it weren’t a good movie, The Shooting Party would be worth seeing for Mason.

Paul Verhoeven’s Flesh and Blood is an entirely different kettle of fish. The Dutch director focuses on the earthier aspects of existence – blood, dirt, running sores – to convey his vision of medieval times.

The story is your basic convoluted adventure, with a band of mercenary soldiers ravaging the countryside – and in particular, ravishing the betrothed (Jennifer Jason Leigh) of a prince (Tom Burlinson). Rutger Hauer, who worked with Verhoven on Soldier of Orange and menaced Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, plays the leader of the renegade band.

This is Verhoeven’s first film in English, and while it is strong on atmosphere, it’s pretty varied in tone. Verhoeven applies an absurdist sense of humor that doesn’t always jibe too well with the material; and some of the actors are off-key (Susan Tyrell, doing a Susan Tyrell caricature of the hearty, lusty earth mother, is fairly grisly).

Much of it plays in cartoonish fashion, with Verhoeven treating the outlandish derring-do and the bloodier realities with an equally irreverent touch. He likes to keep things rank and gross in nature, and since this is the Middle Ages, he throws in a nice round of the bubonic plague to finish everything off. That means lots of rotting flesh and oozing sores for everybody.

Flesh and Blood was talked about at the festival, although it garnered an almost wholly negative reaction (of the people I talked to, at least). Foolish and silly though much of it is, I must admit that I enjoyed a lot of it. Many people thought that Verhoeven didn’t know how absurd his movie was; I think he made it that way deliberately. If that’s not the highest treatment he might have given the material, at least it’s cause for some fun.

First published in The Herald, October 23, 1985

Just making sure the Herald readers who were thinking, “I wonder what Bob Horton has on his mind about Jean Renoir and fin de siecle references?”, had something to ponder. (I wonder why I said fin de siecle when the film is set on the eve of WWI?) Huh. Shooting Party director Alan Bridges also did The Hireling (1973), but worked mostly in high-end British TV. IMDb has an oddball trivia entry on this film, involving an on-set accident that gave broken bones to Edward Fox and Paul Scofield; the latter had to be replaced by Mason, as it happens. I remember the night Flesh + Blood (this seems to be the preferred spelling) premiered at SIFF, and the party after; surely Verhoeven was there, but I don’t remember Hauer coming (the two had a falling-out during filming). Jennifer Jason Leigh was definitely there, looking absolutely tiny next to anybody and everybody else. I think my defense of the film rings true, and points the way toward other zany Verhoeven work.