Ditvoorst believed in cinema as poetry and image - which may go some distance in explaining why his final film is only loosely inspired by the best selling book; The Mother of David S. by Yvonne Keuls. While the author was known for doing extensive research before writing her famous social novels (her literary talent was in working fiction and reality into an almost indiscernible unity), Ditvoorst used the subject of a mother's devastated love for a drug addicted son as a jumping off point into further obsession, control, and a complete slip with reality.
In The Mother of David S., Kuels describes a mother who lives a manipulated life, refusing to accept her son's drug addiction before ultimately distance herself from the problem in order to live in normality again.
In the film, the manipulation does not stop but instead, flips from the addict son over into the mother's control. The way this plays out (and here come the spoilers), is through her newfound ability to prognosticate. Somehow the realization involves a frazzled homeless oracle character who stares up at the sky. When the ex-stage actress realizes her predictions are coming true, she focuses on the situation with her son, who hasn't spoken to her for 12 years. She sees that the way forward is for her to stage a pseudo suicide, where she readjusts her bicycle's path to intercept an oncoming car. She foretells that this will ultimately bring her son to her bedside, where she can propose her final act, in the form of a mysterious note she gives him in the hospital.
His aunt delivers news of the accident, but it's not until a relative (his sister?) who's a sex worker visits, that he heads for the hospital in a stolen taxi. Upon getting the note, he immediately goes cold turkey and leaves his dissolute life (of heroin and painting grotesque creatures) behind for a bizarre doting son role with his injured mother at the family homestead. Inbetween cleaning up and returning, he visits a bathhouse and finds a dead boy on the pavement with yet another mysterious note, "I am always right" (which could be seen as another message from the contolling mother, a warning from the lurking father, or simply a foreshadowing of things to come). In many respects this moment can be seen as the crux of his intimate relationships.
This new strange life of caretaking is only interrupted and emphasized by a dominatrix Doctor who visits to check on the mother's condition. He briefly leaves to find several of his old cronies (a 'front desk clerk'/mad sound scientist, his yogi of a drug dealer, etc) have passed away. Even if he wanted to return, his old way of easy living has fallen apart. Meanwhile, the mother finds out that her injuries now require them to amputate her leg, and she returns home unable to find her son. As he sits in the back yard sketching what seems to be the only 'normal' art we ever see him produce (actually a theatrical design to stage the final scene), his mother maniacally crawls up the giant staircase to try finding him.
It's at this point that fragments of the past and present involving his vile father occur, resolving with the garroting of said father. Who knows what part he's played in this drama, other than a tyrannically cold hand in raising the boy, but it was necessary for the young man to kill him at some point (it's not apparent if this happens as a flashback before he left to do drugs, or is happening now as part of the mother's plan).
The driver who hit her returns to offer flowers and support, but leaves bewildered.
The son sets up a dinner by candle light, a bath, a throne of flowers, and Mozart before carrying her to a flower encrusted gazebo (as per his final sketch) featuring a candle-lit bed of flowers. They lie down to share suicide pills, before we finally see the note she gave him detailing her plan with the final line, "I love you too much."
The film is interspersed with oddly disturbing poetic images of a taxidermied bird inside a glass ball, eagles soaring, creepily threadbare freeze dried animals, a book of mythical creatures, a beaten baby seal that turns into the son; all which may have other deeper significances - but on the surface certainly show us the psychological state of the young man, if not the actual realities of the world he finds both magnetically attractive and simultaneously repulsive. It's a film about a disturbed man from a disturbed family, who comes home to share an ultimately disturbing end with his mother.
Footnote: Three years later, Ditvoorst took his own life. In 1992 actor Thom Hoffman (protagonist of De Witte Waan) made a documentary about Ditvoorst's life.
Footnote: Three years later, Ditvoorst took his own life. In 1992 actor Thom Hoffman (protagonist of De Witte Waan) made a documentary about Ditvoorst's life.
