Have you seen the numbers for average height per country? I can tell you...the Dutch are definitely not small! When I was working on a high school in the Netherlands, I regularly had to look up to students...but here in Paraguay I look like a tower with my height of just 1,83 mtr.
Actually, there is global research that says in case you want tall, healthy and (reasonably) well educated children you best make babies with the locals of the northern parts of Europe, like Scandinavia, Germany, The Netherlands and Denmark (not necessarily in that order
). The Game of Thrones reference: 'Making the eight' does apply though (Carice van Houten is a fine example of what the Dutch can do
Touting the Dutch horn even more...I believe that the area where I was born in the Netherlands (Veldhoven, Eindhoven, 's Hertogenbosch) is regarded by the UN as one of the most intelligent gene pools globally (if I wasn't born there, the area would have been the most intelligent gene pool, hehehe). For that reason ASML, Philips and other high-tech companies have big R&D divisions set up in this area.
More on topic:
Maybe the movie wasn't shot with high-def cameras, but I doubt that. Dutch movies are usually shot with very high quality cameras on high quality film...which is why there is always such a stark contrast between the production values and the camera quality.
Besides that, 1999 was still somewhat the year of VHS. Those devices were usually connected to a standard 4:3 TV displaying a PAL signal of
576i, so a copy with a resolution of only 320x240 would already have looked like shit on those old standards. I have no recollection of ever seeing anything as crappy as that on public or commercial TV stations in the Netherlands. And I come from an age with black and white TV's with 6(!) channels, where you actually had to leave your chair to change the channel.
