WATCH THE TRAILER HERE
First, the Recap:
Welcome to the perfect society. Everything is laid out for you, all that you need is provided, people are friendly, and your sense of worth is constantly reinforced by the wonderfully crafted existence planned and put into motion, down to the smallest bit of land you lay your foot upon. Yes indeed, this is bliss. However, amidst this prefabricated paradise, there seems to be a brewing storm of personal discontent, disconnection, confusion, and overt pondering worming it’s way through a diverse myriad of souls who call this idyllic polder their home. A reclaimed, now emotionally sinking wonderland slowly begins to turn into a hotbed of those seeking greater fulfilment–better jobs, better self-esteem, just better life circumstances. Oh, you don’t believe?
Well, take for example the lone, midge-challenged instrumentalist (Dan de Kok) making one of the polder’s many dykes his stage. Or, how about a distraught woman (Antoinette Akkerman) in a park being waylaid by a local cop (Robert-Jan van Dijk) for something she’s chosen to un-leash one last time. Let’s not forget another woman (Marike op den Akker) at a barren bus stop, determined to improve herself, no longer to be forgotten–accept perhaps by an absent motor coach. In a factory canteen, a man named Jos (Ruud Matthijssen) faces the specter of outsourcing, though it’s really all for the “good” according to his eager co-worker Evert (Ernst Dekkers). Plus, train tracks seem to have become a place for flashes of–genius–for one bookworm (Karine Klyan).
Maybe it all makes sense for the man (Bjorn Silleman) who just wants to work with his trainer (Thijs Gilbert). Perhaps total realization will come from the cocky old man (Lukas Dijkema) who has it all–but for how long? But hey, everything’s just grand on our little polder—right?
Next, my Mind:
Offbeat eccentricity with a wickedly satirical, out-of-left-field mentality paired with equally farcical, oddball but very chuckle-worthy, Wes Anderson-esque humor marks the overall air brought to the viewers eyes and ears when it comes to this 28-minute short film from the Netherlands courtesy of Dutch writing/directing/producing/editing duo Matthijssen and Gilbert, who also grace the screen with their presence, as a selection for this year’s Berlin Liberi Film Festival. If we are going to truly take a good hard look at the realities around us, especially in the contexts of how we aim to relate to ourselves, those around us, and the grander elements of life, this film paints what actually could be seen as a sobering and grounded vision that illustrates how we so often cannot come to grips with one simple fact that encompasses the population of this planet–we’re common and impermanent.
It’s these truths being explored that make the film’s polder setting all the more apropos, as even that in itself is a portrait of something constructed and engineered, as is the majority of the actuality the residents of said polder depicted experience and are consistently attempting to wrap their minds around. We don’t like being plain, we don’t like the thought of death, and for the people here, it’s even a resistance to the very element the land they now survive upon originated from and through, per Matthijssen’s own comments about the project. The further effectiveness of the points and themes presented come from how each facet of this “perfect” domain are on display via the series of tableaus which form the whole of the effort, each containing a person or multiple individuals who represent the highly varying degrees of unsettled-ness the population is really encountering as they intermingle and try to locate any semblance of genuine meaning or direction in their lives when so immersed in what amounts to an artificial, surface-level existence.
As mentioned above, this is all ultimately played for comical effect and, frankly, affect as well, an ideally influential statement about the fact so much around us is actually invented, produced, and assembled, a cookie-cutter tapestry for us to then try and mold into what we wish it to be, even when having the face the certainties it makes us deal with, voluntarily or otherwise. The film is a group effort when it comes to the acting aspects, and each character is designed to elicit specific thought or reaction from the viewer. Akkerman is wonderful as a woman lamenting the end of days for a beloved treasure that she is obviously not at all wanting to let go of. The end game for the character, though, is priceless in its irony later in the film. Robert-Jan van Dijk is quite a stitch as the cop who must follow duty and give the woman a ticket for her “offense”, one that seems so overtly sorrowful and non-offensive given the greater themes being represented in the sequence. Likewise, his appearance later on is filled with equal irony.
Marike op den Akker brings a beautifully executed, witty-in-its-intentional-strangeness performance as a woman stuck in the middle of nowhere at what appears to be a forgotten bus stop, where she then waxes philosophical about her needs and how she means to attain them, even if sounding totally off-her-rocker. Matthijssen is quietly riotous as a worker whose coffee break gets interrupted by his own silliness and the prodding of a co-worker, played utilizing subtly goofy deadpan by Dekkers, to come along for the ride to not just a new job, but a new country, as if it’s the real solution to all their issues, personal or professional. Their secondary interaction puts more than a fair point of biting shrewdness to their dilemma. Klyan arguably has the most revealing role and honestly one of the most hilarious in that for such an astute woman the character she plays is, she certainly takes the notion of “being free to do what I want” to a whole new level, and how it might speak to larger issues she might be holding within, it isn’t evident in the calm, matter-of-fact manner she carries herself and her actions with.
Silleman’s man is the perfect caricature of what we all have admittedly desired to enact when it comes to wanting to be in shape yet not wanting to put in the actual effort to do so, which is what therefore makes Gilbert’s trainer a complete hoot to see when put into the context of the concept exhibited. Finally, you have Dijkema’s wise old man, who has it all together and is very assured of that, until an event occurs that totally destroys the notion and actually puts a slightly serious touch into the mix. Additional supporting turns are present from de Kok as our intrepid musical accompanist and bug aficionado, Dominique den Dekker as a random man with a metal detector, and Robin van den Heuvel as a waitress with a penchant for saving lives. In total, “Klei (Clay)”, which won “Best Non-Budget Short” at the 2016 Korean International Ex-Pat Film Festival in 2016, is a fantastic little indie gem that is willing to do what so many independent creators are willing to–make fun of the human condition in a way that is both entertaining and an almost wincingly acute reminder of the things we take for granted, or perhaps don’t think about enough.
As always, this is all for your consideration and comment. Until next time, thank you for reading!
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