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Gert de Graaff – De zee die denkt AKA The Sea That Thinks [+Extra] (2000)

adminDecember 3, 2015

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The Sea That Thinks is a 2000 Dutch experimental film directed by Gert de Graaff. The film makes heavily use of optical illusions to tell a “story within a story” revolving around a screenwriter writing a script called The Sea That Thinks. The script details what is happening around him and eventually begins to affect what happens around him.

Who the hell needs a story, anyway? I’ve never had an appreciation for what’s known in Hollywood as avant-garde: movies that abandon narrative structure to try to be daring and make some kind of statement. Some of these films though, such as The Sea That Thinks from the Netherlands, are so irresistibly oddball that they’re difficult to dislike. Director Gert de Graaf was in attendance at the Philadelphia Film Festival screening, and his remarks to the audience before the film began were “Don’t try to understand everything. Just watch and enjoy.” Wise words, those.