The Vanishing Film Analysis

In Hollywood, the films are very straight forward with the idea or messages that the director is trying to reveal in order to keep American viewers hooked on to the film. Whenever a foreign film is Americanized, there are always significant changes in the character’s love life between one another, and the organization of the plot; from the symbolism of the film with the theme of the films are altered. This method is very effective because American audiences want to understand the whole concept of the film, where the language is understandable and the film makes sense. American films tend to have more action, drama, terror and a bit of narrative in between to keep the audience entertained and not bored out of their minds while the foreign movies

have longer scenes which goes by chronological order. Like if it’s being filmed in a real time, real weather seasons like fall, winter, spring, and summer and years forward to simulate that the situations heads into the future.

Both the French and American versions of The Vanishing, directed by George Sluizer a Belgian director, had good plots, different ideas, and also the different symbolism behind the golden egg in the French original version and the infinity bracelet on the American remake of the film. Overall, the American version is better than the French version because the characters have a more dramatic approach to the situation, the way the film is cleaner, and more action-packed and realistic which makes a suggestion that us American viewers enjoys emotional, dramatic, violent, and action-packed films. Hollywood film director and author of the article “Film – European Movies: Looking for an American Audience” Fred Hift once said, “When it comes to theaters in America, everybody is looking for a blockbuster and you don’t find those among the imports” (1). We need and expect action in all our films even if it’s a love film because a little excitement can change the whole mood in the room. This is why American films are way better than foreign

films.
The Belgium director of The Vanishing original French and the American remake George Sluizer created unique set characters that makes both films come to life. In the original French version and American remake are four characters: a protagonist, the first girlfriend, the other girlfriends and an antagonist.
In the American remake, the characters take on a more dramatic approach to the situation they face in the film than the characters of the original film. In the remake of the film, there are a couple of scenes almost to the end of the film, the American protagonist is already buried in a coffin and the other girlfriend in the American film takes action by going to the police station to track down the antagonist’s car license plate so she can know where he lives and drove to his house to know where The antagonist is. In the French film, the other girlfriend walks out on the protagonist, eventually breaking up with him because of the whole dilemma with the disappearance of the first girlfriend. All these characters are very unique from one another. For instance, the French protagonist is an over obsessed man who wants to find and find out what happened to the first girlfriend even if it takes him to the ends of the earth to find her. While American the protagonist is an emotional guy who wants to know that happened to the first girlfriend, but eventually moves on at the end of the film. Both The first girlfriend and the first girlfriend are perky and get abducted. The other girlfriend (French) and the other girlfriend (American) are total opposites from each other. The other girlfriend (French) is a woman who is very jealous about the protagonist’s mental affection for the first girlfriend even though she is gone and the other girlfriend (American) a strong woman who is a fighter with spirit and never gives up for what she loves for and a heroine. Finally the killers in the movie the antagonist (French) and the antagonist (American). These men have the same roles of one another, but their characteristics are very different. Both men are chemistry teachers at a high school. The French antagonist is a crazy man who believes he’s God and the American antagonist is a psychopath and crazier than the antagonist. These characters are very unique aren’t they?
The organization of both films are tremendously different. The most obvious one is that both films are filmed in different locations. The original version was filmed in France and the American version was filmed in Seattle, Washington. In the original film, it starts off with the view of the countryside of France with a short song tone while panning towards the highway, the protagonist was driving a black car with the first girlfriend inside. The first girlfriend looks at the trees and then looks at the gas meter and notices that the car is low on gas. The first girlfriend tells the protagonist about it, but he is aware about it and keeps driving. She remembered a dream she had about a golden egg that symbolizes complete isolation and darkness. The car stops inside of a tunnel as a result of the gas tank being empty. The protagonist goes to fill a one gallon container of gas and leaves the first girlfriend and she leaves the car and waits at the end of the tunnel for the protagonist to drive towards her.
In the American remake, the film begins with a liquid type of drug inside of a glass bottle above the glove compartment of the antagonist’s car with a horror, but cheerful type of music while the antagonist is inside of his car driving to his new home in a cabin in the woods by a lake. He goes inside the cabin and there is a scene where he gets a cloth and the drug in the bottle and pours a small amount of the liquid into the cloth and smells it. The drug knocks him out, but before he is out cold, he gets a timer and times himself to see how long it take the drug to ware off and becomes conscious again. After he regains his consciousness, he goes over how he is going to pursue a woman to get in his car to drug her and abduct her. Later comes the protagonist and the first girlfriend heading inside of the tunnel similar to the original, but fails to give away in the beginning the infinity bracelet with symbolizes being together for eternity. Director George Sluizer chose this kind of introduction in the American remake because we citizens want to know what is going to happen before the conflict begins, like a preview of what we are going to be expecting later in the film.
In the middle of both films the protagonist, the antagonist of the French film and the protagonist, and the antagonist of the American film had a confrontation with each other and resulted in a fight. In the original, the antagonist finds the protagonist near a parking lot and tells the protagonist that he abducted his girlfriend by showing the protagonist’s keys. The same keys the first girlfriend had the day at the gasoline station and after that it resulted in a fight. The scene of the fight was poor and seemed to be a cat fight style minus the hair pulling and the punches like in the reality TV shows like on the E Network or VH1. There was no sound effect what so ever no any pain or agony like in the remake. In the American version, the antagonist entered the protagonist’s apartment on the second floor and told him that he is the reason that the first girlfriend is gone missing. The antagonist shows the keys that the first girlfriend had the day she went missing at the gas station and the protagonist began to hit him violently. The fighting scene was very and more exciting than the original because the fight looked realistic with the blood running down the protagonist’s nose, swollen lip, the sound effects for the kicks and punches and falling down some flight of stairs. By the showing of the fight with the protagonist and the antagonist in both films I can confirm that we crave the action of movies to keep ourselves entertained.
Going forward towards to the final minutes of both films, the last final scenes are not the same.

In the French version, the protagonist and the antagonist are at the gasoline station where the first girlfriend was last seen. The antagonist is pursuing the protagonist to drink drugged coffee from a container and denies the offer at first, but then the antagonist said “If you want to know what happen to Saskia, drink it and you’ll find out exactly what happened to her” (antagonist/French). He drinks the drug and goes unconscious and wakes up inside of a coffin with just a fire lighter with him and the film ends with the antagonist’s guilt facial expression as if he regrets doing what he has done to him. On the American remake, the other girlfriend goes to the woods to find the antagonist’s cabin to find the protagonist to save him. When she goes inside the cabin, the other girlfriend looks for him all over the cabin and eventually tried to call the police, but the microphone on the telephone was rubbed around with the drugged liquid and begins to get dizzy but fights the drug and stays conscious. She used reverse psychology on him by saying “I have your daughter and the only way to see her is to drink his own drug” (the other girlfriend/American). When the antagonist drank the drug the other girlfriend grabbed a shovel and began to dig the protagonist out, but the drug had no effect on the antagonist so he began to assault her. The other girlfriend had already expose the

body of the protagonist, but he wasn’t moving at all. The other girlfriend fought back violently all over the wood and inside her car. When both were in the car the other girlfriend pressed the cigarette lighter from the phone charging port and burned the antagonist on his cheek. When The other girlfriend was pinned to the muddy ground by The antagonist, he had a saw in his hand, trying to cut off The other girlfriend’s neck when out of nowhere the protagonist came to save The other girlfriend by hitting him with a shovel killing him and at the end he found a person interested in publishing a book the protagonist wrote and a weightier comes and asked if anyone wanted some coffee and both the protagonist and the other girlfriend denied his offer and their lives go on normally.