Schoenaerts, juiced up on his (and his cattle’s) own supply.

Competing for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar, the Belgian entry Bullhead is pretty much what experience has taught me is a characteristic example of filmmaking from Belgium—a dark, gruesome, sickening but extremely original work that is both repellent and fascinating. It’s about a vicious, bullying cattle farmer named Jacky who swings a shady deal with a Mafia meat trader that results in the murder of a federal cop investigating the use of illegal hormones in meat-packing plants. Jacky is played with ferocious power by coarse, craggy newcomer Matthias Schoenaerts, whose brawny, menacing swagger masks a sad, desperate emptiness that reminds me of the first time the screen unveiled the terrifying impact of Ralph Fiennes’s Nazi camp commander in Schindler’s List. Jacky has the same bulk, constantly pumped on injections of hormones and steroids to hide a devastating secret. Twenty years earlier, when he was a kid, he was assaulted by a brute named Bruno Scheper, who smashed his genitals with a brick. Jacky has spent his life trying to look and act masculine, overdoing the testosterone to grow a beard, expand his chest and get a deep voice and ripped muscles as a masquerade. Meanwhile, his family has held a grudge against the Scheper family, not only for what they did to destroy Jacky’s manhood, but for their mob connections, which have struck fear in everyone who opposes them. Jacky’s best friend, Diederik, was the only witness, but his father forbade him to tell the cops the truth. It all went down in the books as an accident. But Jacky has been waiting all these years for revenge and redemption, and the dirty-meat double-cross is fate surfacing at last. Now he has a chance to put the Schepers away, at the same time reconnecting with Lucia Scheper, an old flame who is the sister of the notorious Bruno, with his old friend Diederik, who is a homosexual informer in love with one of the cops he’s working for, and with Bruno himself, who is now a mental patient.

You can’t accuse Bullhead (the title refers to both the abattoir where Jacky slaughters the bulls and to Jacky himself, since he identifies with the animals he injects with hormones) of being hackneyed. The labyrinthine story, with a myriad cast of sinister characters, including two crooked mechanics who switch the tires on the BMW that is involved in the murder of the hormone investigator, is so complicated and overplotted I can’t even describe it with clarity. I can tell you only that this is a film unlike anything I’ve seen before—harrowing, haunting and sordid. Be forewarned, it is not for the squeamish. But take a chance and you will be rewarded with a work of nightmarish force that is unforgettable.

rreed@observer.com

BULLHEAD

Running Time 124 minutes

Written and Directed by Michael R. Roskam

Starring Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeroen Perceval and Jeanne Dandoy

3/4

• The finance minister of Belgium is saying that maybe it'd be a good idea to expand the European Union's $1 trillion bailout fund as concerns about the Great Debt Contagion continues to menace Spain and Portugal. [NYT]
• "Who will audit the auditors?" is a question the Securities and Exchange Commission has been asking itself for a year now. The answer may come soon, so interested parties should get acquainted with former SEC general counsel James R. Doty and John J. Huber, who used to helm the SEC's corporation finance division. [Bloomberg]
• Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke went on "60 Minutes" Sunday night to reassure America that with our staggeringly high unemployment and extreme economic fragilitiy, we really, really don't need to worry about inflation right now. [WSJ]
• Groupon, the coupon website with the cartoon cat that makes "jokes," has turned down a buyout offer from Google. [AP]
• Bank of America says it has met a $3 billion capital requirement that was outlined as a condition of its exit from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. [FT]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

But then there's that name.

"Every time we get Belgians [ordering] we get, 'Whoa, what a crazy name,' because it's really Flemish slang that we've got on the truck," Mr. Degeest said.

"Wafel" is spelled the Flemish way. "Dinges" (pronounced ding-us) is Flemish slang for "stuff." And the "liege cinnamon royal" waffle is served how King Albert II likes to eat them: "on a silver plate while serenaded by Flemish virgins."

For Mr. Degeest, the cinnamon royal "symbolizes the way that the Flemish are supporting the rest of the French-speaking community" in Belgium, a sentiment shared by many of his compatriots in the north of the country, as media outlets have reported.

But for Belgians living in New York, the political crisis that threatens to split Belgium in two -- and that for nine months left their country without a prime minister -- is "ridiculous," "childish" and even "stupid."

At issue is the linguistic and economic autonomy of Belgium's two main factions: the less affluent south, home to the French-speaking Walloons; and the Flemings in the north, who support their southern neighbors with subsidies and who speak a language more akin to Dutch. In the last few years, politicians representing the 58 percent of the country that speaks Flemish have pushed for language reforms and greater regional independence.

The dispute has created political deadlock. After the June 2007 federal election, Belgium went without a prime minister until March 20, 2008, when Yves Leterme, the election's winner, formed a coalition government. Only four months later, he tendered his resignation, a move which King Albert declined to ratify.

"In Belgium, they quickly become attached to one or another territory," said Renilde Loeckx-Drozdiak, Belgium's Consul General in New York. "They are then surrounded by the publicity of being either a Fleming or a Walloon. And [in New York] they do not have this feeling at all, or much less -- I'm sure they still have a cultural identity -- but they feel they are Belgians."

ACCORDING TO THE 2000 U.S. Census, there are 3,426 Belgians living in New York City. The consulate does not keep statistics on how many are Flemish or Walloon.

Although Belgians in New York monitor the news from their homeland, the ethnic tensions that have inflamed some of their peers have not crossed the Atlantic. Part of the reason for this is that many Belgian expatriates, surrounded by Americans, suddenly discover a common experience in living abroad.

"It's true that when we discuss the matter, we can be passionate about it," said Carlos, a 40-year-old Francophone banker living in Westchester. "But I don't have any animosity [toward Flemish speakers], certainly not."

Carlos has lived in New York for a year and a half but declined to give his last name, since he has family members in Belgium who are politically active.

"If I was living in Belgium, that could be different," he added. "But here, no. Here, we're from the same country."

On July 21, Belgians celebrated their National Day at Petite Abeille on East 20th Street, an event that drew 1,000 attendees by one estimate. The host conducted the entire program in three languages.

"You wonder why it does not happen in Belgium," said Yves Jadot, one of the organizers and the restaurant's owner. "If we can make it in New York, we can make it anywhere," he joked.

Mr. Jadot grew up in Brussels, which has a French-speaking majority but is located in Flanders in the Flemish north. He arrived in New York in 1986, at the age of 18, with $100 in his pocket. Four years later, he opened the first location of Petite Abeille on 18th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The Belgian restaurant now has four locations.

"One thing we share across the entire country is the food," he said. "That's one thing I never understood. I don't know how we manage to get such good food."

Yet, even though Belgian New Yorkers would no doubt uniformly champion their moules frites, Trappist ales, and those delicious waffles, not all of them would call their community united.

"When we look at what is happening in Belgium right now," said Mr. Degeest, the owner of Wafels & Dinges, "we look at it as sort of a provincial fight that's removed from our community in New York. But I still see Flemish people sticking with Flemish people."

Mr. Degeest said that he does not know many Francophones; rather, the discrete social networks of Flemings and Walloons extend to their ex-pat lives. At the National Day celebration, for example, he observed many more French speakers than Flemish. He also noted that on July 11, Flemings celebrated their own holiday. And both have separate ex-pat organizations: Flemings in the World (for the Flemish) and Union Francophones des Belges à l'étranger (for the Walloons).

"If I look at my Walloon friends in New York," said Mr. Degeest, "they don't speak Flemish. A few of them do, but quite a few of them do not. On the other hand, pretty much every Fleming speaks French."

"Even in New York we're kind of secluded," said Chris Vaes, who works in sales. Mr. Vaes, 29, grew up in Antwerp in the Flemish north; he attended school in Dutch but spoke French at home. "It's just when you're hanging out with your friends, you want to be able to speak the same language," he said. "It's much easier to hang out with French-speaking people."

Although both Mr. Vaes and Mr. Degeest insist there is no animosity between the groups in the city, they say the two remain separate.

IF THERE IS ANY such thing as a "Belgian community" in New York, it would exist in the meatpacking district, circa the late 1990s.

Mr. Jadot opened his third Petite Abeille location at 14th Street and Ninth Avenue; another Belgian restaurant, Markt, opened across the street; and the Brussels-born designer Diane Von Furstenberg moved in nearby.

But Markt is now in Chelsea, and its owners are back home "opening new restaurants," as the host informed me. The owner of Cafe de Bruxelles, another Belgian institution near the meatpacking district, has left the business to his French partner. And neither one had a Belgian patron in the seats.

For some New York Belgians, however, the nation itself is an unrealistic idea: "a country that was never supposed to be a country"; "a buffer zone between three great powers"; or "an accident of history." Others compare it to Israel and Palestine, another territory divided up by outsiders.

And then there's Brussels, the "Jerusalem of Belgium," as one native characterized it. The capital of the European Union, Brussels is technically bilingual, geographically Flemish but dominated by Francophones. It is such a potent symbol for Belgians that Yves Michiels, the owner of BXL Cafe, named his midtown restaurant after the city, choosing a name that was neither Flemish nor French.

For Belgian New Yorkers, some of whom grew up there, Brussels is a representation of what the United States, and especially New York, offers its residents: a mix of ethnicities, languages, backgrounds and identities.

"It is a little stupid to have a country as small as Belgium dividing into two pieces, fighting with each other," said Carlos, the banker, "where you see a country here that has so many communities that can go along with one another ... and seems to be workable."

Much of the movie is photographed and directed in an expressionistic crack-cocaine-like haze, with many abrupt close-ups and out-of-focus flash shots. The narrative’s major relationship involves Dan and one of his female students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), who discovers him one day smoking a crack pipe in a stall in the girls’ bathroom. It’s not exactly meeting cute, but it’s a fitting enough confirmation of the neighborhood’s depressed passivity toward all forms of lawless behavior.

Yet the major characters are marvelously gentle and subtle in their interactions, particularly Dan and Drey, who provide a steady stream of exquisite expressions, thanks to the enormous talents of Mr. Gosling and Ms. Epps, and the natural-sounding dialogue produced by Mr. Fleck and Ms. Boden, who are live-in partners as well as a writing team. To establish the contrasting social backgrounds of Dan and Drey, we are given brief introductions to their moderately supportive but mostly distracted families—without exaggerating the roles they play in motivating the uncanny rapport between the two.

There are many opportunities for the film to overestimate the power of good intentions—especially given Dan’s determination to protect Drey, a task that would seem to demand more from him in terms of character and discipline than are likely to be found in a confirmed crack addict—but this is a mistake that the filmmakers scrupulously avoid. In fact, there was a misleading scene in the film’s trailer that ostensibly pitted Dan against a drug dealer named Frank (Anthony Mackie), a close friend of Drey’s imprisoned older brother, also a dealer. In the bit used in the trailer, Dan is shown warning Frank to stay away from Drey in no uncertain terms. Indeed, the level of hysteria unleashed by Dan suggests that a violent collision between the two men is virtually inevitable. As it turns out, it’s nothing of the sort: When Frank smoothly offers Dan a drink while they talk over the situation, Dan’s good intentions crumble in his crack-weakened condition, and he accepts Frank’s offer and his own capitulation. This is a wonderfully perceptive scene that could easily have degenerated into Boy Scout heroics.

The stage is set for Dan’s final humiliation when Drey, driven by her mother’s pressing need for extra money, agrees to deliver a crack package for Frank, only to discover that the needy customer is Dan himself. The traumatic explosion that ensues for the two onetime soulmates impels Drey to turn away forever from Frank and his “easy money,” and may perhaps shame Dan at long last to mend his ways in rehab and stop kidding himself that he can “handle” his addiction.

Much of the narrative is interspersed with the students’ classroom presentations as well as archival clips of prominent 60’s radicals, black and white, speaking out for revolutionary change. The longest such insertion is taken from Mario Savio’s 1964 Free Speech Movement manifesto at the University of California, Berkeley, after the students seized an administrative building on campus. A link is thereby suggested between the hopeful dawn of the student-protest movement and its disappointing sunset, with which Dan is now trying to cope.

The key to the direction of all the performances is tactful restraint and nuanced modulation. This applies not only to Mr. Gosling, Ms. Epps and Mr. Mackie, but also to Karen Chilton as Karen, Drey’s hard-working mother, and to Tina Holmes and Monique Gabriela Curnen as two of the women in Dan’s life. Much of the film was reportedly shot in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Half Nelson is an exhilaratingly ennobling experience for viewers of all races, ethnicities and classes, but I am afraid it will reach only a small, select audience that is least in need of its enlightened, progressive, morally sophisticated message.

Loathsome Leopold

The same can be said of a remarkable nonfiction historical shocker entitled King Leopold’s Ghost, advertised as “a story a king and a country [Belgium] didn’t want told.” It’s directed and produced by Pippa Scott, narrated by Don Cheadle with Alfre Woodard and James Cromwell, and based on the revelatory book by Adam Hochschild.

King Leopold’s Ghost is not a movie to be evaluated simply as a piece of cinema seeking to balance form and content. Of the form there is little to say, especially since the content is so overwhelmingly mesmerizing in its depiction of the depths to which some human beings will descend in the oppression, torture, mutilation and murder of others in the systematic pursuit of profits. Millions of people were murdered in Congo, and not because of some theocratic imperative, as in the mutual slaughter of Muslims and Hindus after India gained its independence from Britain. Nor was it simply another instance of European colonialism in Africa.

King Leopold II of Belgium (1835-1909) was in a class by himself as a colonial exploiter. He reigned as King of Belgium from 1865 to his death. He also reigned as King of the Congo Free State from 1876 to 1904, when he was forced to abdicate because the horrors of his supposedly “benevolent” rule could no longer be hidden or suppressed. But he didn’t abandon Congo empty-handed: He sold his holdings in the colony to the Belgium nation for what might be described as a princely sum, if not an outright swindle of the Belgian people. The monuments to Leopold’s greed can be seen today in many parts of Belgium and the French Riviera. Indeed, the thriving port city of Antwerp was built virtually on the backs of the wretched Congolese laborers engaged in the labor-intensive industries of mining, harvesting and hunting for gold, diamonds, rubber and ivory, among many other valuable commodities. In more recent times, Congo has become one of the chief sources of uranium for the world’s nuclear generators and arsenals. That is the ultimate horror of the film: that not much has changed since Leopold II began his artfully capitalist manipulations over a century ago. In the end, he is almost a comic figure in what has turned out to be an unending horror-movie nightmare of prodigious proportions.

Among the more fascinating footnotes to this saga of evildoing is the derogation, even destruction, of the legend of British journalist, explorer and self-glorifier Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), best known in the popular mind for his expedition into Africa in search of David Livingstone, whom he greeted with the words “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” in 1871. I still remember Henry King’s 1939 Stanley and Livingstone, in which Spencer Tracy as Stanley asks the famous question of Cedric Hardwicke. It turns out that Stanley had a more shameful mission in Africa, serving as Leopold’s advance bullyboy to intimidate the natives and hunt elephants for their valuable ivory. In essence, the time-honored Stanley was an imperial thug for Leopold II, and the Congolese people felt the lash of his whip, both real and metaphorical.

A more edifying footnote involves the immortal Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), whose experiences as a steamboat captain in Congo provided him with the background material for The Heart of Darkness (1899). When Marlow, the narrator of Conrad’s tale, journeys up the river in search of the madman Kurtz, he finds him hallucinating to the refrain of “the horror, the horror”—Conrad’s elegant summation of what he himself had found in Leopold’s tormented realm. Ironically, Leopold himself never set foot in Congo, though his massive footprints in the region are still visible today in the poverty and suffering of the Congolese people, who have never benefited from the exploitation of the region’s vast resources.

The U.S. government and many of the largest American corporations have collaborated with the Belgian colonialists and their own military and corporate sponsors to keep the people of the region from shaping their own destinies. During the period of the Cold War, President Eisenhower and the C.I.A. conspired with the Belgian military to have nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba arrested and murdered by a military thug named Mobuto Sese Seko, who continued the looting of Congo in the name of the anti-Communist crusade—an ideological dodge that Leopold himself would certainly have appreciated if only he’d been around to see it. King Leopold’s Ghost can be recommended as an economical education in one of the lesser-known atrocities of the capitalist system, as well as an eye-opening account of history’s most ruthless amasser of wealth. The people down at Wall Street should erect a statue to the larcenous Leopold: Why should Belgium and the French Riviera have all his monuments?

Hole in the Head

Géla Babluani’s 13 ( Tzameti), from his own screenplay, is the most pointedly and profoundly nihilistic film that one is ever likely to see; in fact, I have never encountered another film that is as ingeniously and insidiously hopeless. Because word has somehow gotten out that a horrifyingly straight-faced enactment of a singularly homicidal form of Russian roulette constitutes the dramatic essence of the film, people have asked me if these scenes are as shocking as the Russian-roulette scenes in Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978). All I can say is that 13 makes The Deer Hunter seem about as harrowing as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (though that’s pretty harrowing too, when you think about it).

But the point is that 13 depressed me immeasurably, even though I refused to believe any of it. This is to say that I would never recommend it to anyone—but if you’re made of sterner stuff than this admittedly tender-hearted reviewer, then read no further, because I don’t think that I can say very much more about this film without revealing the gruesome climax of its Grand Guignol narrative. In fact, one reviewer complained that even the trailer for 13 gave the plot away completely and thereby spoiled the “fun” for people who hadn’t seen it yet.

To begin with, the title of the film simply refers to the number assigned to 20-year-old Sébastian (played by George Sabluani, the writer-director’s brother) to wear on his uniform in a massive game of Russian roulette, in which each player aims at the head of the person standing in front of him.

How did Sébastian get involved in this game, and why is he playing it? This is a long and not entirely clear story that doesn’t bear retelling: Suffice it to say that he is a Georgian immigrant who mistakenly thought that he could make some easy money at this “job,” which he has tricked his way into and from which he cannot now escape. In the first round, each player places one bullet in his revolver and spins the cylinder; then, on the command, they all pull their triggers in unison. After a few of the bullets have hit their mark and the bodies have been dragged away, the survivors put in a second bullet, and so on, until there are only two survivors left, each of whom aims at the other with four bullets in his weapon. Large sums of money are being bet on these illegal contests by wealthy lawbreakers. In the end, only Sébastian is left alive, and after collecting his winnings, he still has to figure out how he can stay alive. Get the picture? I didn’t.

Much of the movie is photographed and directed in an expressionistic crack-cocaine-like haze, with many abrupt close-ups and out-of-focus flash shots. The narrative’s major relationship involves Dan and one of his female students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), who discovers him one day smoking a crack pipe in a stall in the girls’ bathroom. It’s not exactly meeting cute, but it’s a fitting enough confirmation of the neighborhood’s depressed passivity toward all forms of lawless behavior.

Yet the major characters are marvelously gentle and subtle in their interactions, particularly Dan and Drey, who provide a steady stream of exquisite expressions, thanks to the enormous talents of Mr. Gosling and Ms. Epps, and the natural-sounding dialogue produced by Mr. Fleck and Ms. Boden, who are live-in partners as well as a writing team. To establish the contrasting social backgrounds of Dan and Drey, we are given brief introductions to their moderately supportive but mostly distracted families—without exaggerating the roles they play in motivating the uncanny rapport between the two.

There are many opportunities for the film to overestimate the power of good intentions—especially given Dan’s determination to protect Drey, a task that would seem to demand more from him in terms of character and discipline than are likely to be found in a confirmed crack addict—but this is a mistake that the filmmakers scrupulously avoid. In fact, there was a misleading scene in the film’s trailer that ostensibly pitted Dan against a drug dealer named Frank (Anthony Mackie), a close friend of Drey’s imprisoned older brother, also a dealer. In the bit used in the trailer, Dan is shown warning Frank to stay away from Drey in no uncertain terms. Indeed, the level of hysteria unleashed by Dan suggests that a violent collision between the two men is virtually inevitable. As it turns out, it’s nothing of the sort: When Frank smoothly offers Dan a drink while they talk over the situation, Dan’s good intentions crumble in his crack-weakened condition, and he accepts Frank’s offer and his own capitulation. This is a wonderfully perceptive scene that could easily have degenerated into Boy Scout heroics.

The stage is set for Dan’s final humiliation when Drey, driven by her mother’s pressing need for extra money, agrees to deliver a crack package for Frank, only to discover that the needy customer is Dan himself. The traumatic explosion that ensues for the two onetime soulmates impels Drey to turn away forever from Frank and his “easy money,” and may perhaps shame Dan at long last to mend his ways in rehab and stop kidding himself that he can “handle” his addiction.

Much of the narrative is interspersed with the students’ classroom presentations as well as archival clips of prominent 60’s radicals, black and white, speaking out for revolutionary change. The longest such insertion is taken from Mario Savio’s 1964 Free Speech Movement manifesto at the University of California, Berkeley, after the students seized an administrative building on campus. A link is thereby suggested between the hopeful dawn of the student-protest movement and its disappointing sunset, with which Dan is now trying to cope.

The key to the direction of all the performances is tactful restraint and nuanced modulation. This applies not only to Mr. Gosling, Ms. Epps and Mr. Mackie, but also to Karen Chilton as Karen, Drey’s hard-working mother, and to Tina Holmes and Monique Gabriela Curnen as two of the women in Dan’s life. Much of the film was reportedly shot in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Half Nelson is an exhilaratingly ennobling experience for viewers of all races, ethnicities and classes, but I am afraid it will reach only a small, select audience that is least in need of its enlightened, progressive, morally sophisticated message.

Loathsome Leopold

The same can be said of a remarkable nonfiction historical shocker entitled King Leopold’s Ghost, advertised as “a story a king and a country [Belgium] didn’t want told.” It’s directed and produced by Pippa Scott, narrated by Don Cheadle with Alfre Woodard and James Cromwell, and based on the revelatory book by Adam Hochschild.

King Leopold’s Ghost is not a movie to be evaluated simply as a piece of cinema seeking to balance form and content. Of the form there is little to say, especially since the content is so overwhelmingly mesmerizing in its depiction of the depths to which some human beings will descend in the oppression, torture, mutilation and murder of others in the systematic pursuit of profits. Millions of people were murdered in Congo, and not because of some theocratic imperative, as in the mutual slaughter of Muslims and Hindus after India gained its independence from Britain. Nor was it simply another instance of European colonialism in Africa.

King Leopold II of Belgium (1835-1909) was in a class by himself as a colonial exploiter. He reigned as King of Belgium from 1865 to his death. He also reigned as King of the Congo Free State from 1876 to 1904, when he was forced to abdicate because the horrors of his supposedly “benevolent” rule could no longer be hidden or suppressed. But he didn’t abandon Congo empty-handed: He sold his holdings in the colony to the Belgium nation for what might be described as a princely sum, if not an outright swindle of the Belgian people. The monuments to Leopold’s greed can be seen today in many parts of Belgium and the French Riviera. Indeed, the thriving port city of Antwerp was built virtually on the backs of the wretched Congolese laborers engaged in the labor-intensive industries of mining, harvesting and hunting for gold, diamonds, rubber and ivory, among many other valuable commodities. In more recent times, Congo has become one of the chief sources of uranium for the world’s nuclear generators and arsenals. That is the ultimate horror of the film: that not much has changed since Leopold II began his artfully capitalist manipulations over a century ago. In the end, he is almost a comic figure in what has turned out to be an unending horror-movie nightmare of prodigious proportions.

Among the more fascinating footnotes to this saga of evildoing is the derogation, even destruction, of the legend of British journalist, explorer and self-glorifier Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), best known in the popular mind for his expedition into Africa in search of David Livingstone, whom he greeted with the words “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” in 1871. I still remember Henry King’s 1939 Stanley and Livingstone, in which Spencer Tracy as Stanley asks the famous question of Cedric Hardwicke. It turns out that Stanley had a more shameful mission in Africa, serving as Leopold’s advance bullyboy to intimidate the natives and hunt elephants for their valuable ivory. In essence, the time-honored Stanley was an imperial thug for Leopold II, and the Congolese people felt the lash of his whip, both real and metaphorical.

A more edifying footnote involves the immortal Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), whose experiences as a steamboat captain in Congo provided him with the background material for The Heart of Darkness (1899). When Marlow, the narrator of Conrad’s tale, journeys up the river in search of the madman Kurtz, he finds him hallucinating to the refrain of “the horror, the horror”—Conrad’s elegant summation of what he himself had found in Leopold’s tormented realm. Ironically, Leopold himself never set foot in Congo, though his massive footprints in the region are still visible today in the poverty and suffering of the Congolese people, who have never benefited from the exploitation of the region’s vast resources.

The U.S. government and many of the largest American corporations have collaborated with the Belgian colonialists and their own military and corporate sponsors to keep the people of the region from shaping their own destinies. During the period of the Cold War, President Eisenhower and the C.I.A. conspired with the Belgian military to have nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba arrested and murdered by a military thug named Mobuto Sese Seko, who continued the looting of Congo in the name of the anti-Communist crusade—an ideological dodge that Leopold himself would certainly have appreciated if only he’d been around to see it. King Leopold’s Ghost can be recommended as an economical education in one of the lesser-known atrocities of the capitalist system, as well as an eye-opening account of history’s most ruthless amasser of wealth. The people down at Wall Street should erect a statue to the larcenous Leopold: Why should Belgium and the French Riviera have all his monuments?

Hole in the Head

Géla Babluani’s 13 (Tzameti), from his own screenplay, is the most pointedly and profoundly nihilistic film that one is ever likely to see; in fact, I have never encountered another film that is as ingeniously and insidiously hopeless. Because word has somehow gotten out that a horrifyingly straight-faced enactment of a singularly homicidal form of Russian roulette constitutes the dramatic essence of the film, people have asked me if these scenes are as shocking as the Russian-roulette scenes in Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978). All I can say is that 13 makes The Deer Hunter seem about as harrowing as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (though that’s pretty harrowing too, when you think about it).

But the point is that 13 depressed me immeasurably, even though I refused to believe any of it. This is to say that I would never recommend it to anyone—but if you’re made of sterner stuff than this admittedly tender-hearted reviewer, then read no further, because I don’t think that I can say very much more about this film without revealing the gruesome climax of its Grand Guignol narrative. In fact, one reviewer complained that even the trailer for 13 gave the plot away completely and thereby spoiled the “fun” for people who hadn’t seen it yet.

To begin with, the title of the film simply refers to the number assigned to 20-year-old Sébastian (played by George Sabluani, the writer-director’s brother) to wear on his uniform in a massive game of Russian roulette, in which each player aims at the head of the person standing in front of him.

How did Sébastian get involved in this game, and why is he playing it? This is a long and not entirely clear story that doesn’t bear retelling: Suffice it to say that he is a Georgian immigrant who mistakenly thought that he could make some easy money at this “job,” which he has tricked his way into and from which he cannot now escape. In the first round, each player places one bullet in his revolver and spins the cylinder; then, on the command, they all pull their triggers in unison. After a few of the bullets have hit their mark and the bodies have been dragged away, the survivors put in a second bullet, and so on, until there are only two survivors left, each of whom aims at the other with four bullets in his weapon. Large sums of money are being bet on these illegal contests by wealthy lawbreakers. In the end, only Sébastian is left alive, and after collecting his winnings, he still has to figure out how he can stay alive. Get the picture? I didn’t.

The slaughter was of a scale unsurpassed in human history, until, of course, the next war. But what earned World War I its place as the beginning of something new was the introduction of a thoroughly modern, utterly 20th-century idea: that all is fair in war-even the mass killing of the old and infirm, of women and children. While civilian deaths in war were hardly unknown to history before 1914, mankind had deluded itself into thinking that it had escaped the clutches of barbarism, that the 19th century had shown that great military powers could conduct their wretched, though sometimes necessary, business without slaughtering noncombatants. The most famous 19th-century battle in North America, Gettysburg, saw thousands of young men consigned to early graves, but there was only one civilian casualty, and that one was an accident. In Europe, Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 without killing children for the crime of sharing Bonaparte's nationality.

The 20th century made Gettysburg and Waterloo seem almost quaint. As British historians Martin Gilbert and John Keegan note in their respective chronicles of World War I (both called The First World War ), once Germans began killing Belgian civilians in the war's first few weeks, all the old rules were relegated to history's dustbin. From Belgium in 1914 to Kosovo in 1999, nations calling themselves civilized freely, even wantonly, made war on defenseless civilians-not by accident, but as part of a deliberate strategy known as total war.

So many dates, people, inventions and attitudes can be, and will be, associated with the 20th century. Surely our casual attitude toward civilian deaths in wartime will be listed among the era's defining characteristics. We may have put funny little artifacts in a thousand time capsules, but what history will remember about us are places and dates we seem to have forgotten: Belgium, 1914; Armenia, 1918; Nanjing, 1932; London, 1940; Dresden, 1945; Hiroshima, 1945; Cambodia, 1975; Rwanda, 1996; East Timor, 1999. Add to that dreadful roster three more expressions of 20th-century barbarity-the Holocaust; ethnic cleansing and international terrorism-and three mass murderers-Hitler, Stalin and Mao-and it becomes clear that only fools would dare to judge the tyrants and standards of the past.

Historians one day will note that even as the century came to an end, the corrosive effects of total war, the legacy of Belgium, 1914, were very much in evidence. Terrorists were holding a planeload of civilians hostage in Afghanistan. Ordnance that failed to explode during the NATO war against Serbia, including the evil weapons known as cluster bombs, were killing civilians in the Balkans. Land mines in Africa and Asia were adding to the century's body count. And, in America, millions of people spent the New Year's holiday in fear of a spectacular terrorist attack designed to kill as many civilians as possible. We may have celebrated the end of the century, but our fears and the daily realities of life in war-torn nations remind us that the 20th century hasn't really gone away at all.

Those who intend to leave a mark on the 21st century no doubt have a great many plans to achieve what they regard as progress, but if they fail to rid the planet of wars against civilians, any other achievements may seem beside the point. As long as politicians and nations believe that war may be made on the defenseless, even the cybercitizens of the third millennium will be condemned as mere barbarians, as ignorant and amoral as the most bloodthirsty savages of the Dark Ages. Or of the 20th century, for that matter.

As Mr. Gilbert notes in his study of World War I, the power elites of the early 20th century thought that free trade, international travel and the intermarriage of global aristocracy made war unthinkable. Today's Fabians no doubt would make a similar argument, with similarly discouraging results. But while war may be inevitable, war against civilians-strategic bombing, genocide, terrorism-ought to be regarded once again as a global taboo.

That, of course, would require genuine moral leadership. And there is none in sight.

I'm not talking about museums such as the Met or the National Gallery in Washington. We once tried that at the Louvre, attempting to awaken our oldest daughter, who was around 4 at the time, to the splendor of Renaissance painting by calling depictions of the madonna and child "mommy and baby" paintings. When that failed to spark her enthusiasm, we asked her to find any works that included animals. But then we found ourselves being dragged from one gallery to the next as she proudly pointed out all the cows and horsies she'd discovered while the Da Vincis, Titians and Bronzinos went begging.

A friend told me he'd tried to spark his hyperactive son's interest in art, or at least keep him reasonably calm, when they visited the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., by telling him to select a postcard at the gift shop and then find the actual painting in the museum. The kid picked Frederic Remington's The Scout: Friends or Enemies? , the exquisite winter scene of a lone Indian looking down upon an Indian village at dusk, and announced he'd made a match as soon as they set foot in the first gallery by running at the painting at full speed and slapping the canvas with both fists, almost causing the guard on duty to go into convulsions. Fortunately, the painting suffered no permanent damage.

No. The art I'm talking about is what might loosely be defined as avant-garde art. It goes without saying that one would try to avoid any work that features gore, excrement, profanity or videos of the artist and his friends sitting around in the nude smoking cigarettes, as more than a few seem to do these days. But much of the rest of it, in its desire to be technologically cutting-edge, is fun for the whole family.

What brings this to mind is the fact that my family and I just returned from Italy where we had the opportunity to attend the Venice Biennale. I'd heard mixed things about this year's show. One acquaintance, a New Age type, returned from the exposition praising it as more "spiritual" than the previous Biennale. On the other hand, my brother James Gardner, the art critic for National Review and the author of Culture or Trash? , an unflattering critique of contemporary art, asserted that the show was even worse than the last Biennale, which was bad enough.

But I knew from my own experience at the 1997 Biennale, where we frankly had a blast, that whether the show succeeds as art makes little difference when you're traveling with a toddler whose fondest memory of the experience will be the stickers or set of magic markers you buy at the gift shop on your way out. In fact, having no priority besides keeping your kids pacified is curiously liberating. No longer do you have to worry about whether you're "getting" the artist's message or even who the artist is. Your only standard for success is whether the work prevents your kid from curling up into a ball on the gallery floor and wailing that he hates you.

By that criteria, this year's Biennale was a resounding success. We struck gold almost immediately when we wandered into the Belgium pavilion and were enveloped in a delicate, dreamlike fog. The effect was apparently intentional rather than the result of the 100 percent humidity outside.

From there we proceeded to a building made entirely of white plastic crates–Germany's contribution, I believe it was–and caught our breath on stools made of white crates before heading over to the Italian pavilion, which featured a pack of whiskered, 10-foot-tall rats arranged in a circle.

Mind you, if I was traveling with my brother or any adult besides my wife, I'd have been expected to come up with something cogent to say about what I was seeing. Was the fog, though fun, a distraction from the art at the Belgium pavilion–a cluster of water balloons in one alcove, dandelions suspended from wires in another? Were the white crates anything more than a gimmick? What were those rats trying to express about the plight of humanity at the turn of the millennium?

But when you're traveling with kids, you don't care, as long as they're not driving stakes through the paintings and people aren't whispering about what lousy, permissive parents you are.

Speaking for myself, I'd have to say that my favorite exhibit was the United States entry. It featured several rooms where bright pink sand trickled down from the ceiling over white, Braille-studded walls before accumulating in colorful puddles on the floor. While my older daughter Lucy claims her younger sister Gracie "thought the sand coming down the wall was guts and blood," I was blissfully unaware the installation by Ohio conceptual artist Ann Hamilton had any higher meaning until I glanced at an explanation by the front door as I was leaving.

"The work looks back to a damaged idealism and yet somehow optimistically forward to the possibility of a more reciprocal relationship between nature and culture." Who'd have guessed? It was signed "Katy Kline and Helaine Posner, U.S. Commissioners."

Canada provided our only brush with anything that required parental guidance. Its contribution to the Biennale was a couple of bronze dogs and their droppings. On closer inspection, the turds were penises. Fortunately, Gracie didn't seem to notice.

"Can I pet one of the statues?" she asked politely.

Since there were no signs saying not to–one suspects that any artist who works in stool probably doesn't mind people handling his work–I told her to go ahead.

My wife and kids' favorite exhibit, hands down, was the Russian pavilion, which featured photographs of Moscow taken by a 7-year-old chimp named Mikki. "Mikki often changed the focus by touching the lens with his nose," stated his handlers, the conceptual artists Komar and Melamid, who apparently did little more than change the monkey's film. "The impressionistic work that resulted reminded the artists of their nostalgic childhood memories."

Frankly, I was disappointed by the results, even if they were the work of a chimp. His finger got in the way of one snapshot. In another, where he was apparently trying to get a picture of Red Square, he missed everything except the dome of St. Basil's. However, my wife claimed to be satisfied.

"I just can't be disappointed by a chimp," she stated happily. "They're such talents."

When we returned to our hotel, exhausted but enriched, I asked my brother what his problem was. "The art world is rediscovering more traditional media like painting and sculpture," he explained. "This is a step backwards in the wrong direction to the 80's, to conceptual gimmick art."

I asked him to be more specific, but he didn't feel like discussing the Biennale further. "I have to write an article about it," he said morosely. "That's bad enough."

–Charles Baudelaire

A Belgian bistro in the farthest western reaches of 14th Street hardly sounds like a likely prospect for a hip new hangout. But moules and frites are in, as anyone who has stood in line at the Waterloo Brasserie in the Village knows (not to mention Cafe de Bruxelles, which has been selling them for years) or at the two considerably larger Belgian restaurants that have opened downtown recently. At Belgo Nieuw York, near the Public Theater on Lafayette Street, which is like eating in an airport lounge on Mars staffed by monks, the food is only so-so. Markt, a vast bistro on the corner of Ninth Avenue and 14th Street, in the heart of the meat-packing district, is by far the better of the two and a lot more fun.

The restaurant is in a loft building–across from a Belgian sandwich shop, coincidentally–decorated with Tintin covers, and a window selling take-away moules et frites. This is fast becoming one of the city's most revitalized neighborhoods, one block south of Chelsea Market and close to many art galleries. Markt (Flemish for marketplace) is Chelsea's answer to Balthazar. The floors are covered with the sort of antique tiles you see in bistros in France or Belgium, the walls hung with vintage beer posters. The enormous dining room is decorated with mahogany-stained oak, beveled mirrors and etched glass. A factory clock and industrial lampshades hang from the ceiling, and the polished wood tables are set with votive candles and dishcloth napkins. Along one side of the restaurant there is a 60-foot-long marble and zinc bar from the 1920's, manned by bartenders in black shirts dispensing Belgian beers such as Hoegaarden, Leffe, Stella Artois and Belle-Vue. It also has an impressive display of oysters, lobsters and other seafood heaped on piles of crushed ice.

At 9 o'clock, every table in the place, which seats 150, was filled. The crowd was diverse, interesting and lively. One evening, we were seated by the window, and during dinner, passers-by outside kept jumping up to catch a glimpse of the goings-on within over the top of the frosted glass.

"I heard in the men's room that Gwyneth Paltrow is here," one of my friends said–or rather yelled–upon his return to the table. The restaurant is very noisy, so noisy that you can hardly hear a thing the waiter says. Since mussels are offered several different ways here, I asked him which he thought was the best.

"Whole garlic," he replied enigmatically.

After he had shouted it several times, I realized he was saying "Hoegaarden," the Belgian beer.

We ordered the mussels "Hoegaarden," along with the day's special of mussels in a lemon sauce. Two enormous tubs appeared, filled with enough mussels to feed eight people easily, and accompanied by dishes of crisp fries with mayonnaise. The mussels were delicious, plump and juicy, but the differences in the broths, which were also good, was barely discernible. But after eating the mussels we knew why they provided dishcloth napkins. To drink, we ordered an excellent Sancerre from the wine list, which is exclusively French. There is also a wonderful selection of beers.

For years, I have heard people say that food in Belgium is better than it is in France. I think that's probably going a bit far, but it is perhaps one of the last underexposed cuisines in New York. At Markt, the cooking is uneven, but if you choose carefully you can eat very well. The endive salad was very fresh in a robust vinaigrette dressing. Endives also came with the North Atlantic gray shrimp croquettes, along with fried parsley. The croquettes tasted good but had a gluey consistency. The split-pea soup with trout, another typical Flemish dish, also seemed a bit off in its consistency. It was very thin but had an intense flavor, and I liked it.

One of the best dishes was Dover sole "matelote," perfectly cooked, very fresh fillets served over a heap of mashed potatoes flavored with olive oil. I was also impressed with the lobster, which comes grilled, cooked with beer or served in a fennel cream sauce. I tried the latter; the meat was tender and the sauce was subtle.

Markt also specializes in "Waterzooi," the creamy stew made with egg yolks, cream and butter. The broth was pleasant, if a little watery, and laced with chunks of lobster, monkfish and vegetables. My favorite dish was the Flemish rabbit stewed in a rich beer sauce with carrots, a better choice than the tough, stringy carbonade de boeuf. The kitchen also turns out a fine steak tartare with frites (which we had one night after a plate of oysters).

For dessert, "a deep dish of pure Belgian chocolate" turned out to be a perfectly decent mousse that could have used more chocolate, while the rice pudding tasted gritty. But the Bavarian cream was delicious, surrounded by a red berry sauce. Dame Blanche, vanilla ice cream topped with whipped cream and chocolate sauce, is the Flemish answer to a sundae, and our table quickly demolished it.

Nearby, people were smoking away, as is the custom in bistros in Paris and Belgium. So one of my companions lit up a Camel Light. She sports a Louise Brooks hairstyle and her smoke went perfectly with her look. But within a minute one of the hostesses appeared.

"This is not a smoking section," she said firmly but pleasantly. Without further ado, she removed the cigarette from my friend's fingers and carried it away, holding it out in front of her as though she had taken a dead mouse away from a cat. It was the only thing about Markt that didn't feel authentic.

Markt

* 1/2

401 West 14th Street, at Ninth Avenue

727-3314

Dress: Black

Noise level: Quite high

Wine list: French, reasonably priced, good Belgian beers

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Main courses $17 to $24

Hours: Monday to Friday 5 P.M. to 2 A.M.; Saturday and Sunday 10 A.M. to 2 A.M.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor