How can we help the Ukrainians at war? You can take in refugees, send cruise missiles. But if you happen to have a chip shop in the shed, you can also drive there yourself to hand out free containers of fries. That’s what Franky van Hintum and Coen van Oosten did. The two Dutch entrepreneurs met as competitors: they both sold the smallest radio-controlled cars in the world at a fair. In the beautiful documentary Fries War (NPO2) we see them moving through the front areas with their red-yellow chip shop – ‘Lekkers uit Holland’ on the facade. Everywhere they go, long lines form, which remain even when the air raid siren sounds.
Directors Pamela Sturhoofd and Jessica van Tijn soon shift the attention to even more dangerous work by the chip farmers. In a car with ‘Evacuation’ painted on it, the duo travels through a war zone to pick up people left behind and take them to their own shelter, a converted hotel that they have named Holland House. They put a little old lady in a huge white bed, they rescue a child with parakeets on her lap.
Citizens often have to be persuaded to leave their homes. In the meantime, the duo has to watch out for Russian drones and missiles. Why do they do the life-threatening work? They want to help people in need, do something. That is addictive. And also the adrenaline rush you get at the front. When every minute could be your last, you feel alive. They know what they are talking about: they themselves survived a rocket attack on a restaurant. The waitress they had just generously tipped died before their eyes.
Napoleon’s hemorrhoids
Arnout Hauben is also close to the front again Interview with history (NPO2). Just before the battle of Waterloo in 1815, he interviews Napoleon Bonaparte. The exiled French emperor is making a comeback. He defeated the Prussian army at the Belgian Ligny. That is the moment Hauben shows up with his camera crew. As is often the case, the interviewer comes at a very inconvenient time. Instead of worrying about his army, Bonaparte has retreated to his room with a bad case of hemorrhoids.
Actually, those hemorrhoids were his Waterloo, Hauben argues. Because Bonaparte was felled with badly inflamed buttocks, he made a crucial mistake: he let the fleeing Prussians run, allowing them to regroup in front of Brussels. A few days later they gave Bonaparte the final blow at Waterloo.
Small inconvenience, big consequence – ideal for a historical story. In reality, the French army was too badly battered to conduct a night hunt for fleeing Prussians. Furthermore, Bonaparte was afraid that the British troops would attack him from the back. But the unproven hemorrhoid theory is too attractive to pass up.
Flemish actor Stefaan Degand plays an impressive, tormented Napoleon in his twilight years. The fallen general has stood up one more time, but he is actually too tired and he feels that Ligny is the last battle he will ever win.
More than two centuries ago, the battle was re-enacted at Waterloo by enthusiasts in authentic uniforms. Picturesque entertainment. But it was war. Hauben interviews a local historian who tells how after the battle the arms and legs of five hundred soldiers were removed without anesthesia. Hauben visits an archaeological dig carried out by contemporary traumatized war veterans, to emphasize that Waterloo also consisted mainly of prolonged screams of pain. War is a beautiful story later, but at the moment it is mainly misery.
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