Good Men

Grunberg (Tirza) achieves a Dostoyevskian grandeur in this consummate tale of the travails of a Dutch firefighter. Geniek Janowski, nicknamed “the Polack” because of his name though he was born in the Netherlands, lives in the unglamorous city of Heerle. Tall, taciturn, and stoic, Geniek is a kind of holy fool figure who commands mockery and respect in equal measure from fellow firefighters and his family members. “Simple dullness you can live with. Your dullness is deathly,” his wife tells him at one point, a damning assessment he characteristically takes in stride. Geniek goes to great and expensive lengths to placate his older son, Borys, 12—a friendless, depressive outcast—by buying him a pony. This section is tragic and grotesquely comic in the vein of Thomas Bernhard; it’s also something close to a masterpiece. Various episodes of indignity and misfortune follow, most notably the death of Borys after he’s hit by a train, which tests the limits of Geniek’s capacity for suffering. Along the way, there’s a sad sex affair, spiritual yearning, and a stint spent living in a chicken coop. Geniek eventually returns to his wife and surviving son and tries to resume his “unassuming existence.” Grunberg is relentless in his portrayal of a sardonic and obscene world, one that proves an uncompromising testing ground for his hero. The result is a resounding success. (May)