David Hastings | Willem / 2020

confession of an underground hero

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Hastings (screenwriter and director) Willem / 2020 [35 minutes]

 

Based on the imprisonment and killing of the real Dutch underground resistance fighter Willem Arondeus, David Hastings’ 2020 film Willem is a handsomely shot and fairly well-acted short that has received a great deal of attention from the LGBTQ community.

      Arondeus worked as an underground forger to official documents that allowed numerous Jews to take shelter from the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, helping to save the lives of many. After the war, his lawyer released his final message, evidently delivered by his prison guard, the other central figure in this film, that in the times of war “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.”

      For years, many argued that Arondeus’ sexuality denied him the recognition of other war heroes. In 1945 he was awarded the posthumous medal of honor by the Dutch government, and in 1984 he was recognized with a Resistance Memorial Cross by the Queen of the Netherlands. In 1986 Yad Vashem recognized Willem Johannes Cornelis Arondeus as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

     The movie recounts his last days of suffering in his prison cell guarded by an in-cell guard and might be described as more of a confessional than a true dramatic expression of incidents. Willem (Chris Johnson) is, after all, thrown in the cell on June 29, 1943 with a young Nazi officer Alexander (Thomas Loone) already waiting in the cell, tasked with guarding his prisoner.

   Already beaten so badly that he can hardly sit, let alone eat, Willem is no William Hurt playing Luis Molina in Héctor Babenco’s Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) ready to weave his fantastical stories into a romantic adventure that will envelope his cell-mate Raúl Juliá as Valentin Arregui. Willem can hardly speak and Alexander remains mute on orders from his superiors.

      Yet gradually over what appears to be just a few days’ period, he is able to represent his gay life and his underground activities in a manner that slowly loosens up his Nazi priest and eventually turns him into a momentary lover who awards the young hero a last kiss.

      One has to admit that this film is hardly believable, and the script by Hastings is rather leaden, spitting out important events of Willem’s life without being able to provide any of the details which might illuminate the character’s true humanity. At its best it reminds me of the slow conversion of the young would-be AIDS helper David Bennett in another 1985 film, Arthur J. Bressan’s Buddies wherein the wonderful Geoff Edholm as Robert Willow gradually convinces the reluctant “buddy” to become involved in the war against AIDS just by pure expression of his love of a life he about to lose.

       But Johnson is no Edholm, a truly remarkable actor, and the 35-minute format of Willem does not allow either actor to provide a convincing portrait of how they so quickly bonded, let alone why these two different kinds of prisoners might have reached out to one another so successfully in just a few days’ time.

     Let us just admit that Hastings and cast members’ intentions are of the best kind, and that the final kiss, the quickly penciled message that Willem sends to his lawyer, and Alexander’s final tears as he hears the bullet shot into his prisoner’s body beautifully reveals his own recognition of his imprisonment as well. His final act is to peer out the small open slot of the cell door, only to have it closed from the outside by a fellow Nazi soldier, which speaks louder than all of Willem’s words.

     Willem is no great statement among the hundreds of World War II testimonies to the bravery of those who spoke out against the Nazis; but it is a memorable portrayal of another gay figure destroyed by the German intolerance of something they themselves had first put a name to: homosexuality.

 

Los Angeles, February 28, 2022

(Reprinted from World Cinema Review February 2022).