Jacky Vanmarsenille – a suspect for the killing of a policeman – is a cattle farmer in league with the Belgian bovine hormone mafia. In order to escape federal punishment, he will have to overcome the past that haunts him. Michaël R. Roskam’s dark tragedy conveys that no fate is reversible, and no man more human than the cattle he may farm.

In Belgium, the illegal trade dealings have little to do with what we encountered in Scarface, The Godfather, and The Sopranos, and much to do with livestock. That’s right, the “gangsters” in Bullhead are cattle farmers, veterinarians, and beef traders. What is illegal about what they do is that they inject drugs into their livestock, making them grow faster artificially. Rather than hearing lines like “there’s a lot of money in that white powder,” expect to hear “you buy your meat from Uncle Eddy and only Uncle Eddy, understand?” Sure, it sounds funny at first, but nothing about this movie is funny. If you ever find yourself laughing during this film (there were a few lighter moments), it’s because you went to the bathroom during a traumatizing scene, and missed it.

Michaël R. Roskam’s Belgian drama was an excellent film, and clearly deserving of its Foreign Language academy award nomination. In my opinion, an excellent film is one that offers insight on the human condition, and reveals the hearts of its main characters – flawed as they may be. Mathias Schoenaert’s performance unveiled every fiber of the protagonist Jacky Vanmarsenille’s vulnerability, and there was a lot to unveil. As a child, Jacky underwent a torment that made him the way he is in the present, and you really see Jacky’s internal struggle to keep the past behind him. That being said, I wish I’d never seen Bullhead. It was a really traumatic film, and I think I’m going to need to watch Wedding Crashers about five times before I recover.

I cannot tell you what happened to cause such a stir, but I can familiarize you with the emotion. Remember that scene in The Godfather where the big time movie producer wakes up to find the head of his favorite horse in his bed? If The Godfather was a movie about how he attempted to recover from that horrific experience, it still would not be as unsettling as Bullhead. In High School, an English teacher once assigned us to read a Poe short story called Black Cat. In this story, an alcoholic in a drunken stupor gets mad at his cat and, with a pen, gouges out the innocent cat’s eye. This is the kind of trauma more on par with Bullhead. There are people that can handle it, and there are people that will leave early, but no one will object to the film’s excellence. Without the traumatic elements, Bullhead would have been an incomplete product.

In Bullhead, I saw mistreatment of animals, mistreatment of human beings, characters flawed beyond the norm, and even the moments of those character’s lives that made them the vile way they were. None of that stuff was particularly enjoyable to me, personally, but all of it was honest, and all of it felt real. It’s not the kind of movie you watch and have a fun time with, it’s the kind of movie you experience and hope to recover from.

SEE IT, if you’re strong at heart