Bullhead Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.5

Bullhead Blu-ray Movie Review

Of What Is Man Made?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 28, 2012

Film noir may have been born in the urban jungles of America, but it has mutated and cross-bred its way along diverse paths around the globe. For his debut feature, Belgian writer-director Michaël R. Roskam set a film noir in a place less likely than the Texas backwaters of Blood Simple or the Australian suburbs of The Square. Roskam's film Bullhead plays out in the farms, fields and small towns of Flemish cattle country. (Flanders is part of present-day Belgium, but historically it had a separate identity with its own dialect and culture—and even that is an oversimplification.) Roskam was inspired by an actual murder of a Flemish veterinarian in connection with the illegal hormone trade, but as he has repeatedly stressed in interviews, he wasn't interested in doing an exposé of Belgium's "hormone mafia". He wanted an interesting canvas on which to explore elemental issues of fate, friendship and loyalty.

Still, as in every good film noir, there's illegal activity all around, much of it connected to steroids for dosing beef cattle. Cops are in the mix as well, but they're a rough bunch of characters, who don't seem much different from the crooks except for the formality of carrying badges. Small-timers try to steer their way between these two warring factions without getting crushed, and they don't always succeed.

As usual in film noir, the film's protagonist is a loser with a dark past and dim prospects for the future, but Roskam does something simple and clever. Where the usual film noir anti-hero is desperately trying to run away from his circumstances, Bullhead's Jacky Vanmarsenille wants to stay right where he is and always has been. His flight is entirely inside himself, where he's buried his anguish so deep beneath layers of steroid-created muscle that he's become a fearsome brute of a man. With the inevitability of destiny that is the hallmark of film noir, Bullhead chronicles the failure of Jacky's efforts, but Roskam has constructed the story in such an idiosyncratic manner that you never know quite what's coming next, even as you can feel the inevitable disaster drawing closer. For viewers willing to surrender themselves to Roskam's narrative style, the payoff is worth it.

Bullhead was Belgium's official submission for Best Foreign Language Film to the 2012 Academy Awards, beating out the expected nominee, The Kid with a Bike by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. It was selected as one of the five finalists, but lost to A Separation. Still, it's a wonder that such a brutally downbeat film made it this far at all.

Roskam has constructed Bullhead in such a way that information is conveyed to the viewer in a specific order at carefully chosen moments. The number one reason why Roskam can get away with his offbeat narrative is the mesmerizing performance by lead actor Matthias Schoenaerts as Jacky Vanmarsenille, the thuggishly muscled brute with the scarred face and haunted eyes who is the "bullhead" of the title. From the opening scene in which Jacky intimidates a farmer who no longer wants to deal with the Vanmarsenille farm, he holds your attention whenever he's on screen. (In the extras, Schoenaerts discusses his preparation for the role, which involved packing on as much muscle as he could by natural means, so that he could play Jacky, whose bulk has been created artificially through steroid injections.)

Jacky runs the cattle farm with his brother, Stieve (Kristof Renson), and his Uncle Eddy (Jean-Marie Lesuisse). Stieve has his own home with a wife and child, but Jacky still lives where they grew up, with their now-elderly parents. At the moment, Jacky is annoyed at Stieve, because he's acquired a set of new tires for his BMW at a price too good to be true from a pair of local mechanics, the Filippini brothers, Christian and David (Erico Salamone and Philippe Grand'Henry). "Go to a tire store", Jacky keeps telling Stieve.

Jacky's instincts are right on target. The tires are from a car that the Filippinis stole for an underworld figure named Richter (Mike Reus), and now they're supposed to make it disappear. A little late, the mechanics realize that the reason they've been ordered to destroy the car is its connection to the murder of an undercover cop investigating the dealings of Richter's boss, a crime kingpin named Marc DeKuyper (Sam Louwyck). Unfortunately for the Filippini brothers, they were greedy enough to sell the stolen car's almost-new tires to Jacky's bargain-hunting brother (replacing them with Stieve's old tires) before handing the car over to Richter and his associates. Now they have to get back the original tires from Stieve, because they're traceable.

As it happens, Jacky is about to begin meetings with DeKuyper at the behest of a veterinarian named Sam Raymond (Frank Lammers). Sam is the regular supplier of illegal hormones to the Vanmarsenille farm, but now he's trying to move up in the world by brokering a deal with DeKuyper for larger shipments of steroids and beef. Jacky is suspicious of DeKuyper, and his suspicions increase when he arrives at their first meeting only to find the crime boss accompanied by one Diederik Maes (Jeroen Perceval). Diederik (or "Rick") is one of those characters with a complicated past and a lot of secrets—so much that even an extended flashback can't cover everything.

At this point, though, it would be unfair to future viewers of Bullhead to peel back any additional layers of the story. I'll just mention one more classic element of film noir: the femme fatale. There is a woman whom Jacky admires. Her name is Lucia Schepers (Jeanne Dandoy), she works in a perfume shop in town, and she's bad for Jacky in numerous ways. But like so many things that Roskam adapted from film noir, this one too has been transformed in Bullhead until it's something utterly new and unexpected.

Bullhead Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bullhead was shot on film by Belgian cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis (with whom Roskam has made several shorts) and finished on a digital intermediate, where it was given a stylized look in which the world is perpetually dim even in daylight, the country skies are always cloudy, and even well-lit scenes usually have a dark tinge, usually brown or green. Call it "agricultural noir", where sharp focus and earth tones have replaced the hard-edged blacks and whites of classic film noir. Despite the desaturated palette, the image on the 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray remains clear and detailed, except in those scenes where blurring is intentional, usually indicating Jacky's point of view. Shadow detail is excellent, and blacks, when they occur, are deep enough to create a sense of depth and contrast.

Certain parts of the film do show much stronger color, notably flashbacks to Jacky's childhood and scenes involving Lucia. These provide a visual contrast to the stunted emotional life that Jacky leads now.

Only rarely did I observe minor bits of digital artifacting from the DI process, usually on a sharp edge while the camera was in motion. (Such are the limitations of 2K DIs.) The Blu-ray itself revealed no compression errors or artifacts, despite Image Entertainment's unfortunate habit of pinching pennies so that three hours of HD material have to be compressed onto a BD-25. Issues like high-frequency filtering and artificial sharpening did not appear, which is not surprising since the disc was presumably sourced from digital files.

Bullhead Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

If you're looking for demo material, you won't find it on the Bullhead Blu-ray's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. The sound mix is precise but subtle. It's designed to convey psychological states rather than realistic environments. An apt example occurs right at the outset, when Jacky drives up to the farm of the cattleman who is not cooperating with his family. We see Jacky's car approach and park, but nothing is audible except a faint sound of wind, even when Jacky exits the vehicle (off-screen). The soundtrack only comes alive when Jacky re-enters the frame and begins threatening the recalcitrant farmer, and as soon as he's done, the track fades back to silence. This is the world inside Jacky's head, and he shuts out as much as he can.

Director Roskam doesn't hesitate to provide a busy, pounding track when it's appropriate, e.g., when Jacky follows Lucia into a boisterous nightclub, but the primary approach remains minimalist, mirroring Jacky's isolation and blocked emotions. Schoenaerts expresses these aspects of Jacky visually through his physical performance, but their sonic expression is primarily through the doleful score by Raf Keunen, which is a powerful but understated presence at critical points throughout the film. The film's mix shifts the score slightly to the back of the listening space so that it doesn't interfere either with the dialogue or with the sense of silent isolation that Roskam works so hard to build around Jacky. While I can't vouch for the clarity of the Dutch dialogue (or Flemish dialect), I could readily understand the lines in French whenever the characters shifted into it.

As with several recent titles, Image has also included a track in DD 5.1 at the oddly low rate of 320 kbps. I still can't figure out why anyone would want this.

Bullhead Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director Michaël R. Roskam: Recorded specifically for the U.S. Blu-ray and DVD, Roskam chats in fluent English with an unidentified interviewer who prompts him with questions about specific shots and moments of performance. Roskam's comments range widely over such topics as the origins of the story, his work with the actors, his influences (he and his crew routinely named shots after noted directors: "the Michael Mann shot", "the Leone shot", etc.) and reactions to the film. Roskam often seems at pains to steer away from anything that might be mistaken for a pronouncement on the film's ultimate meaning, preferring to let the narrative and imagery speak for themselves.


• The Making of BULLHEAD (HD, 1080p; 1.78:1; 21:58): This informative documentary explores numerous elements of the film, using both interviews with the principals (primarily Schoenaerts, but also Roskam, Perceval and Dandoy) and footage on set and on location. Included is material from an elaborate shootout sequence that Roskam decided was inappropriate for the film. In Dutch and French, with English subtitles.


• Interviews (HD, 1080p; 2.35:1)
• Michaël R. Roskam (11:48)
• Matthias Schoenaerts (6:33)


• The One Thing to Do: Roskam's 2005 Short Film Starring Matthias Schoenaerts (SD; 2.98:1, enhanced; 25:11 ): This was the project on which Roskam and Schoenaerts first worked together and during which Roskam broached the idea that became Bullhead to his future star. The short film is about two men sent to Corsica to locate one John Carpentier. Only gradually is it revealed who Carpentier is and why someone wants him found. In Dutch and French, with English subtitles.


• Theatrical Trailer (HD, 1080p; 2.35:1; 1:46): Atmospheric and unsettling.


• Booklet: An illustrated insert containing stills, an essay on the film by Michael Mann and characteristically eccentric comments from an interview with actor Udo Kier about Bullhead at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival. The booklet also contains credits for the film and Blu-ray.

Bullhead Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

For all of its elements of criminal activity and law enforcement, Bullhead remains a character drama. If you're one of those people who routinely complained during the later seasons of The Sopranos that not enough was happening in each episode, then this probably isn't your kind of film. Roskam is primarily interested in what happens inside people's heads and (dare I say it?) souls. He doesn't stint on showing brutal violence, but what interests him is its aftermath—measured in years. Highly recommended.