Toto the Hero (1991)

Toto the Hero ranks quite high on the weirdness ranking list, but is it an interesting film? No. Or, maybe it could have been, had Jaco van Dormael had a clearer vision of what he wanted to do. As I see it, Toto the Hero is a film about bitterness. We see an old man, Thomas, making plans to kill the man, his childhood neighbor, who he thinks lived the life he should have had. In flashbacks, we see Thomas as a child, in love with his sister, and as an adult, still in love with his sister. Thomas is convinced he is a nobody. He is certain that his life is stolen by his neighbor. It turns out that his childhood friend thinks the same about himself. van Dormael works with a quite special visual style, popularized later on in films like Amélie and Eternal sunshine on a spotless mind. He tries to evoke the borders of fantasy and memory, and how these are permeated with desire and loss. In style, this reminds one of a musical, but in content, it is utterly depressing. If nothing else, what you remember (for days / weeks / years) from this film is the song "Boum" by Charles Trenet. Another funny thing about this movie is that the "bad guy" is called Kant.
It's interesting to reflect on how story is played out. How are we to perceive Thomas? To me, he is less the man who has gotten hard blows from life than he is the man who, engrossed in bitterness, does not see anything as possible; he will always be the nobody. That comes to be seen as an almost metaphysical fact about his life, that nothing will or could change. van Dormael is actually trying to capture a delusional perspective. I would say he succeeds quite well, even though I must say I didn't really care for the film (which was, however, more interesting upon second viewing than when I first saw it maybe 10 years ago).