Why did not matthias's elder brother represent his father in the court when his father was on trial? or he never believed in his dad. Somehow theres lot more to his life which I think Matthias would never divulge? The book which was supposed to be published, was it a fair representation. I would really like to know.
shareWhat trial are you talking about? The trial about the book about Julien Schoenaerts, Mathias's father?
shareI have no idea what case you are talking about (Julien Schoenaerts died years ago), but in Belgium, a lawyer is, for deontologic reasons, not allowed to defend a close familymember like his father.
shareWhat do you want to know? It is a sad story in fact.
Matthias' father was a very, very talented actor. He also suffered from a bipolar disease in a bad way and that caused him and his family a lot of pain and sorrow (psychiatric hospital etc.).
When Matthias was in his twenties he took care for his father who was then very ill and died a couple of years later.
Understandably the family wasn't keen revealing details about that difficult time period and it speaks for them that they most of time focused on the qualities Julien (= father) obviously had.
But then an author had the idea of writing a biography about Julien Schoenaerts. I know this author and he isn't one I should trust to do this sts. In a kind of biography he wrote about himself (Dali and I) he wrote a lot of stuff I higly doubt it was true.
He wanted to release the book a couple of weeks before a very famous book market in Belgium so that he could sell a lot of copies. The elderly (half?)brother apparently had spoken to him about Julien but not Mattias. He disagreed with this biograpy out of fear that his father would not be treated with the respect he deserved.
Once the book came out, the author, Stan Laurijssens, had a quote on the cover that seemingly (was not true) came from Matthias, implying that he was involved in the biography. That was too much for Matthias who wanted the book out of the shelves and went to trial. By that time (it had to be done quickly because of the book market) his brother realized the impact and regretted what he had done, together with other informants who saw their words abused in the book.
Not only was the author accused of falsely mentioning Matthias' name but info about Julien wasn't correct either. The judge allowed the book to be sold but without the quote on the cover.
The author then decided to stop the project "in order to not cause more controversion". In reality I'm sure he got a lot of backlash from the editors who realized that this biography hadn't been done correctly. All printed copies were thrown away.
Matthias stood up for the good memory of his father, with the support of the literary society in Belgium.
So, that was the story.