Jaco Van Dormael (born 1957, Ixelles, Belgium) is a Belgian film director, screenwriter and playwright. His complex and critically acclaimed films are especially noted for their respectful and sympathetic portrayal of people with mental and physical disabilities.
In the 1980s, he became interested in filmmaking and produced a number of short films that aroused considerable critical interest.
Van Dormael made his feature-length debut in 1991 with Toto le Héros (Toto the hero), a tale about a man who believes his life was “stolen” from him when he was switched at birth, told in a complex mosaic of flashbacks and dream sequences, sometimes with almost a stream of consciousness effect. Toto le Héros gained wide critical acclaim, winning both the César Award for best foreign film and the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making Van Dormael something of an overnight celebrity.
His brother Pierre Van Dormael was a jazz guitarist and composer, and had scored his… read more
Jaco Van Dormael (born 1957, Ixelles, Belgium) is a Belgian film director, screenwriter and playwright. His complex and critically acclaimed films are especially noted for their respectful and sympathetic portrayal of people with mental and physical disabilities.
In the 1980s, he became interested in filmmaking and produced a number of short films that aroused considerable critical interest.
Van Dormael made his feature-length debut in 1991 with Toto le Héros (Toto the hero), a tale about a man who believes his life was “stolen” from him when he was switched at birth, told in a complex mosaic of flashbacks and dream sequences, sometimes with almost a stream of consciousness effect. Toto le Héros gained wide critical acclaim, winning both the César Award for best foreign film and the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making Van Dormael something of an overnight celebrity.
His brother Pierre Van Dormael was a jazz guitarist and composer, and had scored his feature films.
Van Dormael’s films, while few, have strong common themes between them. They make distinctive use of naive voiceover and examine the world from an innocent perspective (the young Thomas in Toto, the mentally handicapped protagonist of Huitième Jour, and the unborn child of Sur la Terre comme au Ciel). These characters views are often colorful, imaginative, and somewhat removed from reality, with slight elements of surreal imagery used to illustrate their active imaginations.
His movies also typically end with a death, which is portrayed not as a tragedy, but as a happy moving on where the deceased looks down happily at the world below. Sur la Terre ends with a birth, but it is similarly handled the passing of a character into a new world. This pattern is continued in Mr. Nobody which screened recently at the Toronto International Film Festival, where two deaths open the movie and a unique twist on death at the end of the film conveys a wistful sense of happiness.
Van Dormael makes prominent use of nostalgic standards music, as well, featuring “Boum!” by Charles Trenet in Toto and “Mexico” by Luis Mariano in Huitième Jour as recurring themes. Mr. Nobody used “Mr. Sandman” as its recurring musical theme.
All of Van Dormael’s films contain surreal elements. In his first two films, these moments were few, like dancing flowers in Toto or Georges flying around the room in Le Huitième Jour. Mr. Nobody makes much more extensive use of surreal imagery throughout the film.
Both Toto and Huitième Jour prominently featured characters with Down Syndrome, and portrayed these characters lovingly, emphasizing their child-like characteristics. —Wikipedia
