The Vanishing

It is Halloween. The night was originally about a thinning boundary — between the living and the dead, the known and the unknown. This year's archive still lacked canonical directors from the Netherlands and Finland, so today's pair follows two lines of "a person vanishing from their own story": one vanishes physically, the other from his own memory. Neither uses monsters to frighten; both leave you, when the lights come up, unsure whether you truly know the thing you most wanted to know.

Rex 和 Saskia 是一对在法国度假的荷兰情侣。某个午后，车停在高速公路旁的一处休息站，Saskia 走进加油站买饮料，再也没有出来。Rex 找遍了停车场、树林和每一条岔路，她就像被地面吞掉了一样。 影片用一种近乎残忍的耐心，交替讲两件事：一边是 Rex 此后的每一年都在找她，在电视上公开求助，把生活过成一场不会结束的搜寻；另一边是一个你看得到、Rex 看不到的人——他如何挑选地点、如何练习、如何等待那个恰好落单的午后。 你几乎提前知道了凶手是谁、事故会落在哪里，但电影真正的悬念不是「发生了什么」，而是「知道之后，人还能不能停下」。

It adapts Dutch author Tim Krabbé's 1984 novella The Golden Egg (Het Gouden Ei), co-written for the screen by Sluizer and the novelist. On release it was treated in European and American criticism as a benchmark of the psychological thriller: the National Board of Review named it Best Foreign Film of 1991, the European Film Awards gave Johanna ter Steege Best Supporting Actress, and the Netherlands Film Festival awarded it the Golden Calf for Best Film. What is more often repeated is Stanley Kubrick's remark that it was the most terrifying film he had ever seen, so much so that he called Sluizer to discuss the editing. On Rotten Tomatoes 51 critics award it 96%, with the consensus calling it "one of the most terrifying endings in film history." Empire placed it 67th on its 2010 list of the 100 best films in world cinema. Its terror comes not from blood but from structure: the director lays almost every key on the table, yet leaves you tenser before the final step than any whodunit.