RECONSTRUCTION OF PERSONALITY

IDFA-2023 news

“Glass, My Unfulfilled Life», Rogier Kappers. The film follows fifty-two-year-old Rogier Kappers, an unremarkable-looking Amsterdam resident who enters a midlife crisis with a dream that has haunted him since childhood – to play a glass organ. He is deciding to build the instrument himself, showing great craftsman ability. And despite of his sadness, naivety and doubts he's winning over the audience step by step.

   The film is full of charm – a kind of charm we encounter when we look at the dollhouses: what an unbeliavable multiplicity of details… A glass organ is an array of vessels, connected to a hard board, filled with varying measures of water which determine the musical pitch when the player strokes his fingers across their rims. And Rogier's movement  from very very common feeling of self-dissatisfaction to the very nuanced world glass-water sounds is not just a personal story, but a  global methaphor. Water-glass organ – let’s say it’s not a violin, cello,  flute or even piano – it’s a piece of architecture. In this meaning it demands to re-structure a personality: gloomy, bored personality, who drowns in approximation, in banality, which once in a while creeps up like a disease. To re-construct microscopic screw by screw. Mesmeric results which Rogier gains – playing Bach, ABBA, Beatles and also  the 12,000 seater arena with a 70-piece orchestra behind him. The films looks simple, but only one of the levels. We see the poster for «Taxi Driver» on the wall. . “On every street in every city, there’s a nobody who dreams of being a somebody. He’s a lonely forgotten man desperate to prove that he’s alive.”

    It should be mentioned, that we follow the main character Rogier for seven years. And it's especially delightful that it's Rogier's father who provides commentary in the film.