Divinity and future
It is precisely his most recent film that leads us to Verhoeven’s other great interest: religion.. The strength of its institutions and their impact on society, but especially humanity after divinity. His passion is such that he allowed him to be the first non-theologian admitted to the prestigious Jesus Seminar, whose members analyze the different specialized studies on the truth of Jesus in the Gospels. A fascinating achievement if we consider the controversial career of the Dutchman, whose great pending account is the making of a film whose central theme is religiosity.
He came close to making it in the ’90s with ‘Crusades,’ starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a thief-turned-slave who joins the Christians in the battle to liberate Jerusalem in 1095, only to discover the harsh truth behind the holy war, but The project could never materialize due to its high investment. To this we add his book ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ (2010), which delves into what he considers a divine leader but also a political one. He has dreamed for 30 years of bringing his story to the screen, but he hasn’t been able to do it because “to make a movie you must have action […]. I’m trying to make a historical film in which some of the best action scenes will not appear because they never happened. That gives me a lot of dialogue. I don’t know if I can make a movie with people standing up and talking for five minutes. Who would see it? It’s a dilemma,” he said. an interview .
That may be true, but hasn’t that stopped him from tapping into the son of God as a source of inspiration in RoboCop? And this is how we come to its fourth and last facet: science fiction. The director has repeated ad nauseam that he is not a fan of the genre, which has not prevented him from becoming a benchmark in it thanks to the fact that he has known how to take advantage of it as a reflection of a humanity that is as fascinating as it is absurd. There’s ‘Starship Troopers’ (1997) which uses giant alien insects to allude to nationalism and World War II propaganda. Or ‘The Avenger of the Future’ (1990) whose excesses prevented many from appreciating his capitalist critique and his deepening of the old simulation theories that years later would be promoted by ‘The Matrix’ (1999).
Special mention for ‘RoboCop’ (1987) which made it known throughout the world and which was dangerously close to not happening. A project rejected by multiple filmmakers, including the Dutchman himself! At least until his wife read the script and made him see that it was nothing more than a huge socio-political satire drenched in futuristic overtones and a lot of violence. A film that goes smoothly from the bloody to the absurd and stops at all kinds of reflections on what makes us human. All this, as we said before, with an Alex Murphy inspired by the figure of Jesus and who experiences his own resurrection through technology. A unique film of its kind, to the point that neither the two sequels that followed it –and which did not have the distinctive vision of the original filmmaker– nor its recent remake even came close to its mechanized heels.
Is Paul Verhoeven a creative genius or a provocateur? More than 50 years have passed since the director’s debut and no one has been able to find the answer. Perhaps it is best to avoid extremes and accept that you have a little of both. And it is precisely this that makes his work as fascinating as it is unrepeatable.