January 21, 2025

The Flat Jungle (Johan van der Keuken, 1978)

Whenever laughter erupts at an unintended moment in a cinema, I am reminded of a short text by Simon Leys. In his piece, the Belgian sinologist and essayist recounts a morning quietly working in a café. In the background, a radio emits a murmuring, auditory mush: “Pop songs, stock-market figures, muzak, horse-race reports, more pop songs, a lecture on foot-and-mouth disease in cows – whatever”,1 the type of soundscape no one truly listens to or even notices as it incessantly fills the surrounding space. Until a “miracle” occurred. Out of nowhere, the first notes of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet rang out. This sudden disruption of the café’s placid atmosphere caused immediate consternation. “All faces turned round, frowning with puzzled concern.”2 Until one customer stood up, resolutely turned the radio dial, and restored the familiar noise, much to everyone’s relief.

Also in the cinema, there are moments of disruption, which seemingly cause discomfort and must therefore be neutralized. Since stopping the film is not really an option, the unsettled viewer often attempts to resolve the issue by making their presence known; for instance, by laughing out loud. Laughter in a cinema is, of course, not an unusual occurrence. While watching a comedy, audiences are expected to react publicly to the more humorous scenes on screen, reinforcing and amplifying a sense of shared enjoyment. But more and more, there is laughing in the cinema regardless of the type of film – whether a Holocaust drama, a violent film noir, or an essayistic documentary. Recently, at CINEMATEK, I noticed that Johan van der Keuken’s The Flat Jungle (1978), a documentary about the Wadden Islands and their inhabitants, drew out a varied repertoire of bemusement: chuckles, snickers, giggles, and, at times, a faintly suppressed derisive laugh. In defence of the audience, one could argue that Van der Keuken’s gaze has a certain “observationally comic” quality to it; quotidian things acquire a newfound significance precisely through the framing of his filmed observations. This stylization generates an ironic distance, subtly suggesting an alternative perspective.

Yet there seems to be more at play here. Laughter in the cinema increasingly signals discomfort with what’s unfolding on screen, as if, much like the “audio pap” in Leys’ café, the film must at all costs maintain its strictly ambient quality. In The Flat Jungle, Van der Keuken depicts ordinary people: fishermen and farmers struggling to stay afloat amid the rising rationalisation of their fishing and farming sector. Towards the end of the film, he converses with a former fisherman who, forced by market pressures, had to take a job in a factory. A man born and raised by the water now finds himself, out of necessity, on land. With a mixture of resignation and frustration, he submits to his new life: “I don’t feel unhappy, so I suppose I must be happy. I can’t really say much more than that.” The unguarded directness with which he reflects on his life is deeply moving. And yet, in the theatre, a mocking laughter rang out, instantly erasing the weight of his words.

Leys’s analysis of the café incident was sharp and unforgiving. In the ensuing commotion, he also discerned a revealing portrait of the true cultural barbarian. The real philistine, he writes, is not someone indifferent to art and beauty, but someone who recognizes those ideals all too well, and seeks to instantly destroy them. It is someone for whom the confrontation with “inspired talent is an intolerable insult to [their own] mediocrity.” Like a vengeful vandal, Leys concludes, the true obscurantist seeks “to deface, to deride, and to debunk any splendour that is towering above us.”3

In a similar way, laughter in the cinema serves as a shield against the internal rift a film opens in the viewer, against the threat it poses to their personal complacency. Increasingly, it arises in response to ethically ambiguous moments in a film, provocative not because a scene itself is shocking or uncomfortable, but because the viewers feel themselves addressed with such directness that it appears almost indecent. (I recall, for instance, a sharp, almost nervous laugh during The Zone of Interest, when it became clear that the Höss’s family home had been built right next to a concentration camp.) Laughter here becomes a means of expelling the unbearable – often by laughing at someone else – thereby assimilating it into one’s own familiar world.

Ultimately, such bursts of amusement affirm the most distinctive feature of a cinema: Its silence is anything but trivial.

• 1Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays, (New York: New York Review of Books, 2011) 68.
• 2Ibid.
• 3Ibid, 69.