Pinkel

• Watchlist

A humorous portrait of a young man with a working class background who turns into an anarchist punk. Over the years, however, he changes into a genuine bourgeois with conservative opinions. Anarchy is no more. The disintegrating welfare state has but little to offer, and these young wayward kids easily resort to right-wing radicalism and racist views. This seems to be a major trend in the cities of western Europe. Pinkel is a film about a former punker. He is twenty years old, has a job as a paper-hanger and shares an apartment with his girlfriend and their baby in a Rotterdam slum area. Pinkel (which means something like 'little one') used to be a politically conscious punker. When Pinkel was 14 years old he started working, but gradually he considered the work he was doing dull, and suddenly, as he says in the film, he quit working and became a punker. Pinkel and his friend Geert used to play in the punk rock band The Tändstickorshocks. Pinkel has turned his back on the punk movement, however, and has eventually chosen for a way of life he used to fight against and which he once abhorred and rebelled against. His views concerning women and foreign workers, to name just a few things, are now directly opposed to the ideals which were featured in the radical songs of The Tändstickor-shocks. Anarchy is no more. Nowadays, Pinkel leads a nice and quiet life. This doesn't imply that there aren't any problems. Sometimes Pinkel worries about things: how to make enough money to support his family, how to get out of the slum area, and even about life itself. These serious problems notwithstanding, Pinkel is quite confident about the future: he is sure that one day he will make it. This film is representative for a certain group of young people, which can be found in any big city of the west. Part of the film was shot in 1979, during the hey-day of the Dutch punk movement.