‘I think we made a film with Narcosis that enchants you a bit’

Suppose: someone types the name ‘Martijn de Jong’ into Google. For example, someone from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who gets to participate in the decision-making process for the Oscar entries for best international film. Then there first dives the Dutch mixed martial artsfighter Martijn de Jong op. And not his namesake, the director of the Dutch Oscar entry narcosis. Also on IMDB, the world’s most used online film database, several Martijnen de Jong are now featured.

“My producer said, Huh, have you worked on six martial arts movies?”

Martijn de Jong (1982) – the director – will fly to Los Angeles next month for the screening of his debut feature film, together with lead actor Thekla Reuten. ‘When they see me there, during the interview afterwards, they might think: gosh, she’s lost weight.’

The director sits at the table next to his screenwriter and girlfriend Laura van Dijk (1972), in the Amsterdam district of De Baarsjes. To the interviewer, who had mentioned the other Martijn de Jong: ‘But what exactly was your question?’

Has he ever considered a stage name? After all, the Dutch film world already had the necessary De Jongs: Ate, Mijke, Sam.

‘Maybe that would have been better, yes. De Jong is so common that it is almost funny.’

‘Van Dijk and De Jong’, notes Van Dijk.

‘The funny thing is’, says De Jong, ‘that I once thought: if I become a top football player, this is not necessarily the best name. Frenkie de Jong: I understand. Martijn de Jong at the ball: a bit drowsy. But when I started as a director, I never thought: oh, it’s nice for the audience if they know my name too.’

September Film, the Dutch distributor of narcosis, did not hesitate. ‘A film by Martijn de Jong’ is prominently displayed on the poster and in the trailer. ‘I asked: how is my name going to attract more people? Nobody knows me yet, right? It’s about the suggestion, they said; that people think: oh, I must know that name. So now it’s too late for a stage name anyway. I will continue as Martijn de Jong.’

Hundreds of post-its

For two years, the film in the making covered an entire wall in the filmmakers’ upstairs apartment, cut up in many hundreds of post-its, with colors to mark the scenes and time indications. Today there are still three orphaned pieces of paper, overlooking the advancing toys of their young children. Brief scenario clues, instantly recognizable to whom narcosis has seen: ‘John drives away’, ‘Boris dive’, and ‘piano’.

John is the father played by Fedja van Huêt, a professional diver. He can no longer emerge from the eerily deep South African Boesmansgat, causing his family to be disrupted. Boris is his son, who, like sister Ronja, tries to comprehend the sudden absence of their father in her own way, while the mother Merel, shot in survival mode, tends to denial. And the piano, which stands in the garden of their attractive but maintenance-requiring detached house; John plays the melancholic leitmotiv melody (by Canadian musician Patrick Watson) that returns in the final scene.

Van Dijk, looking at the now virtually post-it-free wall: ‘It wasn’t like going home and letting it go for a while. I think we’ll look for an office for the next film.’

De Jong: ‘It is also nice to immerse yourself in the film in this way. But everything becomes part of that home office: your relationship, the children.’

Grief and loss

narcosis was quickly classified as a ‘mourning drama’, which is not entirely in line with the intentions of the filmmakers. Van Dijk: ‘It is a bit of a stamp: mourning, loss. It’s in there, that’s right.’

De Jong: ‘A film about mourning – if I read it that way, I wouldn’t get very excited. While I think we’re with narcosis have made a film that enchants you a little, shows you another world. That’s the beauty of film, isn’t it?’

Van Dijk: ‘Crying at a movie can sometimes be nice too.’

De Jong: ‘But there are also funny moments in it, it is not a very heavy film. After the first public performance, I spoke to someone who said: I now want to go home and cuddle my children for a week. That feeling.’

Van Dijk, who also wrote the screenplay for the award-winning youth film My very weird week with Tesscame up with the idea thanks to two podcasts narcosis. One was about a diver who disappeared in Boesmansgat, and one about the phenomenon wind phone, the telephone box devised in Japan after the tsunami for people who want to call deceased loved ones. Also in narcosis figures such an unconnected telephone box. ‘What if your loved one’s body cannot be found? That question intrigued me. How do you deal with that then? And children can also deal with grief very differently compared to adults. Ronja still has the age of magical thinking in the film. Boris is a little older, he’s mad at the world.’

De Jong: ‘Merel knows that John is no longer alive, but at the same time she has no proof: his body has not been found. Then you can get stuck in denial.’

That Merel in the film is also a medium, or ‘clairsentient’. And when she carefully resumes her professional practice after a while, husband John breaks in during her seances. narcosis is told in such a way that the viewer does not necessarily have to go along with the supernatural; it can also only take place in Merel’s head.

‘When I told about the film, I noticed something of shame in myself,’ says Van Dijk. “Okay, here it comes: and she’s clairsentient. I still find it exciting. How are people going to react to that? Are they quitting? One thing, here in the sober Netherlands. I also think that this is not possible. And yet it intrigues me.’

De Jong: ‘Whether or not you believe in mediums should not matter. The film has to work anyway.’

No relationship yet

De Jong grew up in the village of Simonshaven, below Rotterdam. Mother clothing designer, father urban planner. Van Dijk comes from an Amsterdam family of artists: mother flamenco dancer, father musical actor Bill van Dijk. She also writes scripts for her sister, director Nova van Dijk. De Jong and Van Dijk had no relationship at the start of their first collaboration Freea television drama about a girl who corresponds with a lifelong convict.

Then yes. narcosis is by no means biographical, nor is it free from the personal. Father John’s habit of hiding exceptionally well when playing with his children, for example. ‘Martijn already had that before we had children,’ says Van Dijk. ‘Then I rang his doorbell, came upstairs and suddenly he was gone, hidden. Sometimes I really couldn’t find him.’ The house in the film also resembles the director’s parental home. And then there is his mother, with whom the production designer started talking to imagine the spiritual world of Merel.

De Jong: ‘My mother is clairsentient. I wondered if this should be in the movie. You soon see Jomanda in a flowing dress in front of you, I want to protect my mother and Merel from that image.’

Van Dijk: ‘What I liked about Martijn’s mother, when I heard about it, was that she wasn’t special about it at all.’

De Jong: ‘We put Merel down soberly: boots in the mud, grumpy, but not floaty. She happens to be able to do this, just as someone else can do something else. And my mother, she is a normal, sweet and intelligent woman. I don’t believe she does what she thinks she does. But at the same time, it’s not fake either. She feels something, that’s sincere. And she helps people with it. I only hear stories from people who are grateful to her.’

Close to the circus

On the advice of Thekla Reuten, who gained an overseas career from the Oscar-nominated feature film The Twins, De Jong is in talks with agencies in Los Angeles. ‘We are going there in November, the shortlist for the nominations will be announced in January. It is especially nice to be so close to the circus. Thekla has been doing this all her life, I’m so glad she’s coming. With her someone really comes in: eloquent, full of humor.’

The publisherswho promote the campaign and press moments narcosis care in the United States, De Jong already asked: what are you open to? “Let’s turn it around,” I replied. What can be done? The funny thing is, no one there has seen the movie yet. So I think: go and have a look first. At the same time I spoke to Joost van Ginkel, whose film The Paradise Suite was once the Oscar entry. Joost later learned that he had behaved a bit too modestly in Los Angeles. So you have to watch out for that too.’