For a Lost Soldier

Based on the autobiography by Rudi Van Dantzig, "For A Lost Soldier" takes place during the end of WW II in the Netherlands. It's the story of a young boy in Amsterdam whose parents send him to live in the country (Friesland) for his own safety. A family who had initially asked for a young girl ends up being young Jeroen's "adoptive" family. Jeroen is coming of age, being the tender age of 12, and is making discoveries on his own, especially his sexuality. He doesn't necessarily understand his feelings at first, until the arrival of the Canadian Liberators in 1945.

One particular soldier, Walt Cook, takes an interest in young Jeroen and a friendship blossoms between the two. Heit, Jeroen's adoptive father, sees that there is more to their friendship than meets the eye, and lets him know that he sees what's going on. This doesn't bother the other soldiers, however. In fact, as other soldiers are courting young girls in the village, so does Walt "court" young Jeroen. The two fall in love with each other, and a sexual relationship does indeed develop.

Perhaps it's Walt not wanting to face the hurt Jeroen will eventually face, but he fails to tell Jeroen that his platoon will be leaving. Jeroen is crushed when he realizes that Walt is gone the next day, and tries in vain as he searches the village for him. A heart-breaking scene.

But Jeroen's mother returns for her son, and the first thing he tells her is "I think you should know I am going to America!"

The film has some beautiful cinematography. Maarten Smit was excellent as Jeroen, as was Andrew Kelley (who is a dancer in the Royal Dutch Ballet) who played Walt. Rudi Van Dantzig, himself, has choreographed for the Royal Dutch Ballet, and it's obvious he had a hand in choosing just the right person to play the "Lost Soldier".

This kind of film couldn't have been made anywhere else due to the age of young Jeroen. Overall, an excellent film. Haunting, brutally honest, and bittersweet.


Surprising and courageous   January 10, 2000
John Rice (Milwaukee, WI USA)
32 out of 34 found this review helpful

It is not often a film seen in the USA can deal with the kind of subject and not fall into the knee-jerk reaction of condemnation. Admittedly the film was not made in America. However, I found the film something of a challenge. For a long time after I saw I retain images of scenes: the solder and the boy dancing and how free the boy must have felt; the pained suppression of feeling of the boy with his friend from home; and the intimate scenes of the soldier and the boy. Some have noted how the boy is left alone at the end, hurt that the relationship ended with no closure. This was a time of war. Unforturnately, soldiers forget themselves and fall in love for a brief time. They have left lovers and babies. For the boy, however, it seemed that the pain went away and he was left with a beautiful dream. I am not sure this excuses anything. But sometimes those initial moments when we learn about life are both painful and beautiful.


Shattered Realities   January 19, 2004
D. Richardson (Toronto, Ontario Canada)
30 out of 31 found this review helpful

'For A Lost Soldier' is a film which I have watched several times! It deals with a volatile topic, the story of a very young boy who fills a gap in his life in the arms of a young Canadian soldier in World War II. Since the story is based on the autobiographical book by Rudi Van Dantzig, it is not whimsy or fiction, but rather a glimpse into one man's pleasant childhood memories. Rudi Van Dantzig defends the book and the film in the context that he was NOT abused by the soldier! The director took some liberties with the film, both in the introduction and again at the end, but otherwise stayed fairly true to the story. The movie challenges one's ideas regarding consensual sexual relationships which involve an adult and a minor in a specific situation. If anyone was seduced in the film, it was the soldier, according to Van Dantzig. The boy is in control and very aware of what it is that he wants from the soldier at all times. The event happened during the liberation of Holland and the liberation theme is tied closely to Van Dantzig's description of his personal liberation.

The film also gives a vastly different view of life in Holland under German occupation. While the movie and book, 'The Hiding Place' portrays the horrors of Nazi power in a large city, this film shows what life was like in a remote village. The boy's ration card, so carefully guarded in the city, is not even recognized by his 'adoptive' family. They appear to eat well and their village is only guarded by two German soldiers. The soldiers are so bored, they attend the local church service on Sundays, even though the minister is raining down hellfire and brimstone on the German forces in his sermons. One movie with two new concepts to explore, makes the film a basic to any good collection.


On Exploitation   March 22, 2004
Atro Up
25 out of 48 found this review helpful

I've thought very hard about this movie after reading these reviews.
I couldn't, and no matter how hard I try, can't distinguish the soldier's behaviour towards the boy from pure self-gratification - an exercise in narcissism, projected from 1st person to 3rd.

The boy's regard for the soldier, I suspect would be entirely familiar to any boy who ever had a crush on an adult.

but Love?

I found it a thought provoking movie, because it used the cinematic conventions of a love story to tell a story about neediness. Sure, neediness is necessary to love, but sufficient? Hardly.

I don't have a problem with a movie portraying sexual exploitation, but felt uneasy that the treatment here skirted perilously close to sanctification and propagandisation. It was certainly not `portrayal' in any way I could make sense of.

It has an uneasy resonance, for me, with a strong tendency in the community of men who exploit boys: they mistake the undoubted readiness of certain boys to form attachments, and their curiosity about sexual development, for love and/or sexual desire. I believe this impression is largely formed and reinforced by powerful expressions, like this movie. The problem is that such expressions almost certainly represent the wishful thinking of adults, rather than the authentic experience of kids.
Even when the story is autobiographical, as I believe this to be*, it makes sense to me that the dishonesty could represent a sexualised variation on the self-replicating damage we see in schools and military institutions, where each incoming group "grows up" from being exploited and abused to perpetrate the same on the next intake. There's some sort of "empathy bypass" which seems to be inherent to the mechanism.

*From reading the review of the book on which the film is based, the film has definitely been sanitised and perhaps crosses the line into fiction : in the book, the soldier forces sex with the kid, and his general behaviour towards him is even less consistent with love than is depicted in the film. I didn't know this when I wrote the preceding, and I somewhat sickened to reflect that the movie's promos and reviews ever led me to believe this was a film which might uplift me.
The whole thing starts to feel like a triumph of romanticism over honesty, perhaps in the tradition of the "Olympia" films of Leni Riefenstahl, where the beautiful bodies and movement of athletes, and the considerable arsenal of artful cinematography, were conscripted in the glorious service of something horrible about to engulf Europe.

I don't require my movies to condemn. In fact, I prefer them not to make moral judgements of any sort. It disturbs me, however, when they use misleading packaging to inveigle me into taking an interest, and then once I'm inside, use an essentially dishonest "insemination by imagery" process to surreptitiously advance a moral judgement - in favour - of the frankly indefensible.

I defend your right to see this movie and make your own judgement, but I'm glad I can exercise my right to warn you about it.