The Vanishing (1988)

98. Vertiginous genius, when it does at all, comes with a panic of unpleasantness. Now, compound that rule by three whenever its marvelous source lies frozen not in Coleridge's dead body, as Wordsworth professed, but in a land bordering the North Sea. The Dutch may not be the hardknocking, monastery-burning raiders of the Sagas, but neither are they a frilly Mediterranean bunch of olive oilers. As far as it goes, they're Norse enough, and it takes a northerner to scavenge the soul of a philosopher-madman.

The Vanishing is so uncommonly at ease with its own originality and daring that it scandalizes, all through its first and second viewings (back to back, thank you), at every methodical moment, all the other disjecta haunting this industry of manufactured interest and narcotic desire. I really never realized how interchangeable most movies are, even the good ones, until I saw The Vanishing, which is utterly unchangeable. It is also unreproducible, as proven by the director himself, George Sluizer, when he failed to transplant the brain of The Vanishing into a grossly American body. Alas, that body belonged to Jeff Bridges, the Dude.