The film “ Full Contact ” directed by Dutch film director David Verbeek and selected for the new international Platform competition of the Toronto International Film Festival stands out with its insightful and psychology-driven plot line.

The Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival films invariably amaze us by their uniqueness and meaningfulness. The film “ Full Contact ” directed by Dutch film director David Verbeek and selected for the new international Platform competition of the Toronto International Film Festival stands out with its insightful and psychology-driven plotline. The film is full of allegories, symbols and psychological elements.

The film is made up of three sections which technically can be made similar to the three canticas of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise that the main character has to go through. According to David Verbeek, the cave featured in the film takes us to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, which also consists of 3 parts: “Imprisonment in the Cave”, “Departure from the Cave”, “Return to the Cave”. By introducing platonic archetypes and simultaneously presenting the virtual shortcomings of the modern world, David Verbeek takes a step towards the depth of postmodern culture.

As Verbeek highlighted during the conference held within the framework of “GAIFF 2016” the shooting of the film coincided with the period when there was a tension between the West and the Islamic world. Yet, as the film director stated, the film has no political context, but it represents the destructiveness of modern technology, which seems to allow the American troops to kill from a far remove without risking their own lives, despite the high likelihood of human error.

According to Homer, war is hell. The first segment of the film has a similar allegory: because of an error the main hero Ivan kills innocent people which according to Verbeek later on scars many soldiers’ psyche with PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder). This is when Ivan’s journey to his own hell kicks off.

Article by: Shushan Khachikyan

http://tiff.net/festivals/festival15/platform/full-contact