Paul Verhoeven: ‘I identify far more with the… | Little White Lies

Interviews

Paul Ver­ho­even: I iden­ti­fy far more with the female” part of my brain’

11 Apr 2022

Words by Justine Smith

Elderly man with white hair smiling, against background of religious imagery including cross and nun's habit.
Elderly man with white hair smiling, against background of religious imagery including cross and nun's habit.
The Dutch provo­ca­teur chats les­bian nuns, alter­nate real­i­ties and his undy­ing love for Quentin Tarantino.

Except for maybe Robo­Cop, Benedet­ta rep­re­sents Dutch film­mak­er Paul Verhoeven’s clos­est attempt at ful­fill­ing his life­long wish of bring­ing the sto­ry of the his­tor­i­cal Jesus to the screen. Based on the tri­al tran­scripts described in Judith C. Brown’s Immod­est Acts: The Life of a Les­bian Nun in Renais­sance Italy’, the film revis­its many of Verhoeven’s life-long obses­sions: unsta­ble real­i­ties; sex­u­al desire; cor­rupt­ed pow­er and the divine. Set dur­ing the 17th cen­tu­ry, an Ital­ian nun (Benedet­ta Car­li­ni) blessed with divine visions is declared a mys­tic and a liv­ing Saint by the Vat­i­can, only to be accused of sap­phism and put on tri­al for her crimes.

LWLies: What is it about the line between real­i­ty and illu­sion that fas­ci­nates you?

Ver­ho­even: If you look at Total Recall, I made a movie from the per­spec­tive that there will be two real­i­ties: the real­i­ty that Arnold would be the sav­iour of Mars and the real­i­ty that he’s still in a coma. Gary Gold­man [one of the co-writ­ers] sug­gest­ed that [the film] is not this’ or that’, but this’ and that’. You can call it post-mod­ern if you want to use a fash­ion­able term. The most impor­tant movie that inspired me was Rashomon, and in that movie, there are four real­i­ties! When I was a young man in my twen­ties, when the film came out, it hit me, of course. Every­body has his real­i­ty, that he sees through his own eyes and is shaped by the way his brain has developed.

Rather than cast doubt on Benedetta’s fan­tasies, you recre­ate them. In Brown’s book, it’s clear­er that Benedet­ta has a men­tal ill­ness. What moti­vat­ed this choice?

In her brain, Benedet­ta cre­ates a Jesus that is say­ing what she wants any­way. In the begin­ning, Jesus says, Stay with me.’ Then, lat­er, it turns out that Jesus was not a good guy. There’s the scene with the snakes, and lat­er, she picks up some­thing from the mer­ce­nary she saw when she was ten years old and makes him Jesus. He’s a bad guy. Jesus is a false God. She inval­i­dates Jesus and stays away from him. There are oth­er scenes where Jesus is on the cross, the real” Jesus, who tells her to take off her clothes. There’s no shame, mean­ing it’s okay for you to get naked and have sex. Her Jesus is some­body that always changes to fit the direc­tion she wants to go in. He sanc­ti­fies her deci­sions, makes them sacred. It comes from him that she can have sex, which at the time was for­bid­den. At that time, that kind of rela­tion­ship would be pun­ished severe­ly. Being a les­bian meant you would be pun­ished like a crim­i­nal, but you would be burned at the stake if you used a tool like a dildo.

I thought it would be inter­est­ing to show her doing things but let the audi­ence make up their mind. I want­ed to show her visions with­out telling you what to think. The visions, though, are com­plete­ly par­al­lel to where she wants to go. She uses her reli­gion as a tool to do some­thing that is absolute­ly forbidden.

You wrote a book about the his­tor­i­cal Jesus, focused on his human­i­ty. How did your per­spec­tive inform the film?

The big mis­take of Chris­tian­i­ty is that the res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus is not pos­si­ble. They always for­get and, but it is very clear in the Gospels that Jesus was absolute­ly con­vinced that the king­dom of God was com­ing. Not in 2000 years, but now, in a cou­ple of months. That ulti­mate­ly did not come. There was no king­dom of God. Then, the Church invent­ed this won­der­ful, clever lie that Jesus came back. They invent­ed this res­ur­rec­tion that nev­er hap­pened. So, instead of lis­ten­ing to Jesus, what he has to say is very clear in the para­bles, all the focus falls on the res­ur­rec­tion. What Jesus said was very impor­tant, but because the King­dom of God nev­er came, they changed every­thing around, and sud­den­ly Jesus was res­ur­rect­ed.” But, what is impor­tant to me, is what he said, not that they made him the son of God. I don’t think he saw him­self as the son of God at all.

That, of course, is an under­tone of the movie. That lay­er is sub­dued and not explic­it­ly said, but it’s still me (laughs) [so, it’s there].

Two elderly people, a man and a woman, in religious garb standing in a dimly lit setting.

Hitch­cock has a bit of influ­ence on many of your films, even your same fas­ci­na­tion with blondes. Is this a con­scious choice?

I learned a lot from Hitch­cock and notably, Verti­go and North by North­west, which I appre­ci­ate prob­a­bly more than ever. The women for him, basi­cal­ly if they had dark hair, weren’t very impor­tant. That could be a lit­tle bit the case for me. For exam­ple, the main char­ac­ter [in Basic Instinct, played by] Sharon Stone is blonde and the oth­er impor­tant char­ac­ter has dark hair. I’m sure there is some influ­ence there, but I’m not aware I’m doing these things. Recent­ly, I saw the scene in Basic Instinct where [Stone’s] les­bian lover dies in a trag­ic acci­dent, came from a com­ic book, [Dick Bos by Alfred Mazure], I had read in 1943. I saw the draw­ings of Mazure and 30 – 40 years lat­er, I made the exact same shots. Some­times these things happen.

For a long time, in my films from Hol­land and cer­tain­ly in the begin­ning in the Unit­ed States, I iden­ti­fied far more with the male char­ac­ters. Robo­cop was a male, Dou­glas was a male [in Basic Instinct], although Sharon stole the show. In the last 10 – 15 years, that slow­ly dis­ap­peared, and I became more inter­est­ed in the pull of the female char­ac­ter. I don’t know why it is. It’s not on pur­pose. It just hap­pened. I’m work­ing on a new script with Edward Neumeier, who did Robo­cop and Star­ship Troop­ers, a Wash­ing­ton thriller called Young Sin­ner, and the two main char­ac­ters are female too. It might be my old age, but I iden­ti­fy far more with the female” part of my brain.

We’ve spo­ken about some of your favourite films from the past. Are there any con­tem­po­rary film­mak­ers you love?

That would be Taran­ti­no. Once Upon a Time… in Hol­ly­wood was a beau­ti­ful movie, and the end­ing was real­ly one of the fun­ni­est scenes I’ve ever seen, you know when he starts to shoot all those peo­ple? [laughs] But also, the light­ness of the film, Brad Pitt at the stu­dio, the girls hitch­hik­ing. I felt that it cap­tured what I felt like when I came from Hol­land to the Unit­ed States. It’s cer­tain­ly, for me, one of the best movies of the last 10 years.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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