Spoorloos means 'Traceless' in English. It was a Dutch-French production and released in 1988. It's a bilingual film and falls under the horror subgenre, Psychological Horror. If you have seen Nolan's Memento where Ghajini drew the inspiration from, you will know what a non-linear structure of storytelling means. You would get to know the climax first in such films and then the film would explain to you how that climax was reached. Spoorloos follows a young couple who decides to roam the countryside. Somewhere down the line, the girl gets secluded from the boy and is kidnapped by a self-confessed Good man and 'sociopath'. Simple, isn't it? Well, not so simple. The boy goes on an endless and painful search of the girl. For 3 years, he doesn't find a clue. He gets the nationwide coverage from print and electronic media both in Holland and France and urge the kidnapper to meet him. He decides to forgive the kidnapper only if he lets him know what he did to his girlfriend. What follows next is unbearable to watch. For that matter, the whole film is an exercise in 'futility' you would assume. It's setting is unsettling, pace just good enough to have you on roll and acting top class. Stanley Kubrick, the maker of my and millions of others' favorite horror film of all time, The Shining, called it's director for discussing the editing on his next project and called Spoorloos the 'scariest' film he had ever seen. Now if you have watched and known Kubrick, you would know what a great honour it was Spoorloos. It's riveting and a must-watch experience.
It's really hard to switch on to a different language from the one you have constantly been tinkering with. I grew so accustomed to writing in Hindi in last few days that it started dawning on me that I might never be good again with my English. So this is a tester, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday, one of my movie group friends, an American by nationality, questioned my fondness of documentaries. I specifically wrote in one of my columns that documentaries demand your unwavering attention and once you gave 'that' to them, you are rewarded much more handsomely than a proper, narrative, fictitious film. My reasoning for believing so is that a documentary is an experience of a creative process. It doesn't get made to 'entertain' you. They are there to reveal something to you. They teach you something. You get overwhelmed by them. 'Racing Extinction (2015)' was one such documentary. I watched it in last couple of days. I couldn't complete it in one ...
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