Tag Archives: Jos Stelling

An older film critic’s life is interrupted by an unexpected visitor.

In the final year of his life, Rembrandt painted a series of self-portraits that show him in a dark, lonely state of mind. Stelling has painstakingly recreated the pathetic end of a genius with an authenticity that allows viewers to infer their own conclusions about the relationship between Rembrandt’s life and art.

Late 16th century, persecuted protestantism and general dissatisfaction with the Catholic Habsburg rule in the Netherlands lead to large-scale plundering and vandalizing of churches, only harshening the Spanish Inquisition, sparkling the Eighty Years War. Flanders, 1568: Italian minstrel Campanelli tells he followed a Dutchman, the robber of a golden chalice, but failed to prevent him being taken -after banging a country-girl- by the men of a rigid farmer Netelneck, who has him tied-up inside a huge shit-container. After Campanelli frees him, the gold stays inside, and the Dutchman is killed, but the minstrel turns to offer the paying audience a happier version. Seven years later, he scares the Dutchman’s posthumous son into bringing him food and convinces the kid he can fly, like his dad, who is on a grand ship, but fails to drag the gold out and is blinded and chased by Netelneck.