Netherlands Production Platform - Nederlands Film Festival

The Fields
Savage Film
Belgium
Writer/director Michaël R Roskam
Producer Bart Van Langendonck
8 • NPP 2008
Synopsis
1985: 13-year old Jacky is a member of a
large cattle-breeding family in the south of
Limburg. Jacky spends his teenage years in
the countryside with his best friend, Alex,
son of the family’s vet.
Both boys’ fathers are worried about the
new European regulations on hormone use,
but the boys don’t care about this and spend
their time hanging around in the fields and
neighbouring villages. What they mostly chat
about is Jacky’s obsession with the unreachable
Lucia, daughter of the owner of a big
trucking company from a nearby village.
Lucia’s mentally unstable 16-year old
brother, Bruno, doesn’t make it any easier
for them. Then one day, while they’re out in
the fields, Jacky and Alex catch Bruno and
his friends in the act of masturbating - in the
presence of Lucia and her friend! Bruno
spots them and, going completely berserk,
smashes Jacky’s balls between two rocks.
Alex is powerless to intervene.
Afterwards, Bruno’s powerful father
manages to cover things up. Even Alex is
forced by his own father to remain silent,
since the latter is being blackmailed by
Bruno’s father.
A rift develops between the two families,
and the friendship between Jacky and Alex
comes to a sudden end: life will never be the
same again for either of them. 1985 ends with
the suicide of Alex’s father following his arrest
on suspicion of hormone-trafficking. Strangely
enough, Jacky’s family is unaffected.
20 years later: 33-year-old Jacky has
become a taciturn but violent man. Now a
cattle-breeder, he has become fascinated by
the effect of hormones on animals and has
begun experimenting on himself. In fact, he
has managed to reconstruct his manhood
through the use of a powerful cocktail of
testosterone. He has also taken his revenge
on Bruno, reducing him to a vegetative state.
Through his expertise and collaboration
with veterinarian Sam, Jacky manages to hold
his own in the hormone business. But Sam
wants more, aiming to make an exclusive deal
with powerful businessman and hormone
dealer De Kuyper. They set up a meeting.
Everything appears to go smoothly until
Alex suddenly appears as one of De Kuyper’s
associates. Jacky and Alex, both equally surprised,
are caught off-guard. But Alex turns
out to be working as part of an illegal undercover
police operation.
Once again, the two men are forced to
take a stand against one another, and memories
of the past are revived. In a rather clumsy
way, Jacky also involves Lucia in an effort
to free himself from his past - because she is
the only one he has ever loved as a ‘man’,
even though he was only 13 at the time.
Jacky and Alex confront the emotional
limits of loyalty and friendship. When the
police are about to arrest Jacky, Alex is once
again the silent witness, unable to help his
friend. This eventually leads to a final confrontation
between Alex and Jacky with
Lucia forced to be witness. For Jacky, the
only way out is an over-dose of testosterone,
going out in a blaze of ultraviolent glory.
Director’s statement
The Fields is a classic story, told in a nonchronological
way, about friendship and loyalty;
about destiny, powerlessness and
impotence; and about how sometimes character
and personality combined with certain
events in a man’s life can determine his destiny
before it has even started.
The story also hinges on conceptions
about the human condition: is man predestined
by birth, by his genetic design, or is he
the result of circumstances The story also
plays on contemporary events and specific
elements in Belgian society, starting with
the real-life scandals involving the hormone
and doping mafia.
This gives me the opportunity to tell a
story with a true background, set on real soil
in the area where I grew up myself, that is
nonetheless universal.
The premises are particular: a man, literally
without balls, is forced to substitute
his lost masculinity chemically with testosterone,
artificially creating courage and
strength. Then there is the encounter with a
‘forgotten’ childhood friend, now an undercover
cop. And finally, there is a woman