Paul Verhoeven: Violence

 

Today im gonna talk to you about this old man, his name is Paul Verhoeven. This movie director its very important to my conception as a filmmaker, because his movies shocked me when i was a child. 

Verhoeven was born in Amsterdam on 18 of July 1938, and  yes, he lived the World War II and the Nazi ocupation, hard childhood. He talks about this years. Bombs falling from above, the city in ruins and he walking on corpses. That is part of his style: human fragility and pure violence. When the war ends, he saw amercian films and he fall in love in this art. He start to shoot films, and acquires his particular style: hyper realistic erotism and violence, human fragility and the human conflict. But he dont have success in Holland and was acused of immorality. But the american industry took him with pleasure. 

Maybe you know some of his american works: Robocop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers, The Hollow Man. All of them are in my personal favorites movies of all time. But im not the only fan of this guy. Robocop and Starship Troopers are cult classics, admired and studied for his commentary of the american society, the human existence and his particular style to talk about all of this: criticizing but belonging to criticism, with slight hints from his comment. Robocop its a movie about the human existence, life and death, living after all memory, but all of this under a fun and violent criminal story. Starship Troopers its a movie about facism, miliratied society and the war, but under lights and bullets and fun, under a empty but cleber war sci-fi movie. Acctualy, in his time Starhip Troopers was named a facist movie, but the critics now understand his mistake. 

Why i love this man? He inspired me not only to study filmmaking, he inspired my style too. How he can make shocking, stuning action packed movies, but with a complex and deep subtext. I want to be like Paul. You can see him directing in the Behind the Scenes, with a lot of energy. Acting like his monsters, screaming, yelling, jumping. Not behind a director chair, always in the ground, always in everywhere. I want to be like him. Its one of my favorite directors and, in some way, a teacher of mine.