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If you are watching with subtitles this would probably be of no concern to you.

As a native speaker of Dutch this makes some lines for me hard to understand. Maybe this is due to the reason I watched this movie on television, but still it is a trend.

For some reason Dutch movies tend to mix the spoken lines softly and the music really loud. The biggest downside to this movie, coherent to a lot of Dutch movies, was in the audio mixing. Although probably some effect was used to get this it felt as a very natural portrayal of a society where electricity was not readily available, although around the corner, as the movie is set in 1888. It felt very natural and accurate, scenes at night where mostly lit by oil lamps or candles and the scenes inside are mostly darker even when it is day. The effect I loved the most is the lighting in this movie. On the downside this makes the plot sometimes a bit hard to follow. This gives a certain historical distance and I find that praise-worthy. The dialogue and behavior of most characters is distant, which is in my humble knowledge mostly accurate and a lot of the feelings the characters are experiencing are oppressed and show just a little. Centered around two cousins (fictional characters to be precise) this movie gives them a lot more temporal feel.

Publieke werken succeeds in grasping the stunning visuals used in those other movies but tell a much more layered and original story. Michiel de Ruyter has little historical context and especially the behavior of the characters does not feel like the seventeenth century (children disturbing their father and jumping on his bed for example). Although the visuals due to the higher budgets are stunning (especially in Michiel de Ruyter) they lack a lot in historical accuracy and feeling. Most historical movies from the Netherlands in recent years have a tendency to be action flicks, as with the movies Michiel de Ruyter, Kenau and het Bombardement. Having said this, budget is being a bit more generous in recent years. There are some great directors and actors (although most actors focus on theater, as with Gijs Scholten van Aschat who is mainly a theater actor), but the movies have little budget and tend to be bland comedy-dramas. Dutch cinema is always a bit of a hit or a miss.