If a script can be personified, Bullhead needs but one word: cruel. Not because it mistreats its audience—on the contrary, the film is as beautiful as it is miserable; dazzling as it is horrific. The sheer amount of sadness that writer-director Michael R. Roskam packs into two hours is so penetrating, so concentrated, and so visceral, that the experience is utterly exhausting. But I’m no masochist. So, it should also be said that Bullhead is assuredly one of the most raw, profound films you will see this year.
Set in Belgium, the story centres on a group of individuals involved in the trade and use of illegal growth hormones in the cattle industry—“the hormone mafia underworld,” as one ambitious reporter states. The subject is idiosyncratic, but the treatment is dead serious. A noir-ish atmosphere is maintained throughout, and the film opens with intimidation and murder.
Though a number of characters are involved in the plot, there is only one star of the show: Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts). This is not because secondary characters were underserved by the script, nor because the actors portraying them were unskilled; rather, it is due to the breathtaking performance by Schoenaerts in the lead role. Channelling a mixture of brutality and vulnerability, and eliciting a contradictory combination of fear and concern, Schoenaerts utterly dominates his scenes and the film as a whole. The plot brims with originality and suspense, skillfully interweaving Flemish-Walloon tensions with memorable, dynamic characters. The fact that all this becomes a sideshow to Jacky’s personal narrative is a testament to Schoenaerts’ unbridled virtuosity.
The cattle are not the only ones juicing. Early on, we see Jacky injecting what we later understand as a cocktail of testosterone and various growth hormones. The reason for this is soon revealed via flashback, and in undoubtedly one of the most brutal scenes I’ve witnessed this year. The emotion one feels is nothing less than pure, unadulterated horror. What follows is scene after scene of wrenching pain, as the happiness forever stolen from Jacky is trotted out by the screenplay and paraded in front of his eyes. This is what is meant by the cruelty of the script. What must it feel like to be incomplete, broken, and condemned to perpetual deficiency?
Schoenaerts crafts a character reminiscent of the Minotaur: half-man, half-beast, trapped by circumstance, a creature for which one feels unspeakable dread and endless pity. On more than one occasion, Jacky snatches defeat from the jaws of victory; at these moments, the cosmic injustice permeating his storyline becomes unbearable. Right up until the end, the only happiness Jacky sees is that of others. It is a reflected living, which is not living at all. His is a life wholly devoid of pleasure.
Through Bullhead, Roskam and Schoenaerts gift the world with a modern day mastering of the tragic form. The story of Jacky Vanmarsenille ends as it begins: alone, abandoned, and in the throes of violence and pain. Bullhead paints a vision that is bleak and uncompromising, a dizzying array of sorrow and rage and anguish. At the same time, it is a cinematic triumph, a reminder of the raw emotional potential of the medium—for from suffering comes glory.
—Bullhead opens this Friday, September 14th at Cinema du Parc, 3575 Avenue du Parc.
