Dutch Film Festival 2024 Review: LIKE TEARS IN RAIN, A Lovingly Portrait Of A Private, Adventurous Man

For film actor Rutger Hauer, the bravado of his early Dutch films as Turkish Delight, Soldier of Orange and the thoughtful villainy of Blade Runner were his signature as an actor. In the 1982 science fiction film made by Ridley Scott, Rutger Hauer played the role of 'replicant' Roy Batty. Hauer said much later, in 2012, about it: 'I saw the future but I didn't know what I was looking at yet'. And the future in Blade Runner takes place - twist of fate - in 2019, the year the actor passed away.

'I saw the future'. It is almost the same sentence that Rutger Hauer came up with the night before filming for his character Roy, a sentence that will remain in film forever: 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe'. Batty / Hauer speaks to a cornered Rick Deckard / Harrison Ford. The film, which initially received mixed reviews from the public and critics, grew over the years into the cult hit and genre masterpiece that it still is. And with the film, Rutger Hauer's international fame grew. In the Netherlands, he had already been famous for a long time.

It started on the stage at Toneelgroep Noorder Compagnie from Drachten in Friesland, where well known Dutch actor Peter Tuinman also played at the time. His first TV work came at the end of the sixties. In 1969, he played the leading role in thirteen episodes of the quickly very popular television series Floris. In it, he was the fearless late medieval knight who, like a kind of Homer, returned from distant travels, demands what is legally his. The director of that TV series was Paul Verhoeven, the screenwriter was Gerard Soeteman, with whom Hauer would gain fame in the Netherlands.

Turkish Delight (Verhoeven, 1973), the film adaptation of the book of the same name by Wolkers, was one of the greatest successes of Dutch cinema ever and was also nominated for a 'foreign language' Oscar. Many feature films would follow and in 1975 a second, now German TV series of Floris was released with Hauer again in the leading role. Also known in the Netherlands were the book adaptations Max Havelaar (Rademakers, 1976), Pastorale 1943 (Verstappen, 1978) and of course the best known of them all Soldier of Orange (1977), again by Paul Verhoeven, in which Hauer played the title role.

In 1980, his American career began with leading roles in films such as The Osterman Weekend (Sam Peckinpah, 1983), the international co-production Flesh + Blood (Verhoeven, 1985), The Hitcher (Harmon, 1986) and numerous other films in which he played leading and supporting roles, up to and including his role as an authoritarian gangster boss in the western The Sisters Brothers by Jaques Audiard from 2018. His death, reportedly after a short illness, at the age of 75, thus ended his acting career quite suddenly. A career in which he played in a 100-something features, many series, won awards, including a Golden Globe and two Golden Calves from the Dutch Academy.

That brings us to the documentary Like Tears in Rain that Rutger Hauers goddaughter Sanna Fabery de Jonge made about the actor. The film premiered recently at the Dutch Film Festival that was held in Utrecht in the last week of September 2024.  The documentary paints a intimate picture of Rutger Hauer who was born in 1944 in de Dutch town of Breukelen -the New York namesake of which is called Brooklyn in the US- and who died in 2019 in Beetsterswaag in Friesland, the province where his acting career started.  Fabery de Jonge knew Rutger Hauer and his wife Ineke all her life. 'They were and still are my parents' very best friends,' she emphasises with affection,  'they were always present'.

The idea to make a film about the actor came after Rutgers death at a memorial half a year later. Sanna Fabery de Jonge always knew he was a special man but there she heard from the people around and from various speakers what Rutger had meant to them. There came the thought to her to do something with this.  Most people don't know these different sides of Rutger and maybe we can in a film about him, lift a corner of the veil, about how he stood in life.  She knew that the film had to start from her and her personal connection to Hauer as her godfather, friend. 'How I saw him, is clearly visible on the super 8 films: very sweet, humorous, adventurous and traveling the world together with his great love Ineke.'

Through her close relationship to the actor Sanna had easy access to his material. All his life Rutger Hauer used film and video to take snapshots and register events not seldom also on set. The same goes for his friends and people he worked with including those from the international film world such as Robert Rodriguez, Whoopy Goldberg and Mickey Rourke. What struck her was that they saw him very well for what he was. "And actually also the recognisability in these ‘famous’ people. They are all self-made talents, people who do not participate in Hollywood as standard, who keep their private lives to themselves, who make unique films, seek adventure. I also think that was the connection with Rutger, they simply understood him well,' she explains. It is something you see back in the documentary she made and is certainly one of the impressive strong points.  

Another strong point is the rhythm of the film. When Sanna Fabery de Jonge tells about what was left out because during editing, it no longer fitted into the story. As she says: 'Topics like his involvement with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and his own Starfish foundation which Rutger was very committed to, and also some smaller story lines about unknown people from his environment that he did a lot for then, it was really kill your darlings. Ineke had a beautiful tattoo done of Rutger's fingerprint, which we shot in LA. That was very beautiful and emotional, but unfortunately, it interrupted the rhythm of the film so we left it out'.

And the rhythm, that almost mysterious work of craftsmanship that gives films their power, is there in Like Tears in Rain. That and the man and the love of friends family, goddaughter and the like  make it a worthwhile.  What the film does beautifully is paint a portrait of a talented, poetically minded man and actor who was constantly looking for silence in his many adventurous undertakings all over the globe and in his constant longing for his beloved home and wife and friends in the Dutch region of Friesland. 

As in the title quote Like Tears in Rain two fluids mix untill you don't know what they are  Hauer was a man and actor of many faces. Adventurous and private. Often abroad and homely. Those two sides that were also a guiding principle of the film. Here again her close relationship to the actor helped her.

“Rutger was a gentle giant,” said Ridley Scott in a statement about the actor just after he had passed away in 2019. 'I think every film is fiction', Rutger Hauer himself said seven years earlier in Milan in an interview. By that he meant that every film looks at the story and the world through the eyes of its maker. And Hauer added, as the documentary shows, his own vision to that in his long career.

He wrote the following piece for his dialogue in Blade Runner himself: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

With thanks to Sanna Fabery de Jonge,  the director of Like Tears in Rain who was in busy times so kind to answer my questions and to the Dutch Film Festival where I had to honour to be one of the jurors for the press prize of the Festival.