Garin's int'l reputation further extended<\/p>\n
By Jane Freebury<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Comedic actress Rosanna Arquette and the
\ndirector of the brilliant hyper-violent Reservoir Dogs, Quentin
\nTarantino, were among the judges at the 1994 Taormina
\nInternational Film Festival in Italy (July 27-Aug.2) where Garin
\nNugroho's film Letter for an Angel, Surat Untuk Bidadari, won the
\n`Cariddi d'Oro' for best film.<\/p>\n
It was the winner from among twelve films invited, including
\nentries from France, Italy, the United States, all of which were
\nselected for exhibiting `new trends' in feature filmmaking.<\/p>\n
Letter for an Angel has further extended the international
\nreputation of Garin Nugroho as one of Indonesia's foremost
\ncontemporary directors. In the 1980s he won awards for Best
\nDocumentary Film at the Indonesian Film Festivals of l986 and
\nl989 and for his fiction feature, Cinta dalam Sepotong Roti, Love
\nin a Slice of Bread, he was awarded the prize of Best Young
\nDirector at the Asia Pacific Film Festival, South Korea, in l992.
\nThis year Letter for an Angel has been screened at film festivals
\nin Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney (this year's Asia Pacific
\nFestival Venue), Melbourne, Tokyo, and Berlin, where it won the
\nBerliner Zeitung Prize in the Forum des Jungen films. In November
\nAngel goes to the London Film Festival.<\/p>\n
Garin reports that the Taormina judges recommended Letter for
\nan Angle for its particular combination of tragedy with comedy
\nand for its mix of pop and traditional culture. To give an
\nexample: There is a scene in the film (to which the film returns
\nseveral times) where the central character Lewa refuses to
\nidentify a sketch in his school textbook with his mother, whom he
\nlost years ago in a bus accident. The sketch is of an average
\nwoman in traditional dress, still he will not conform and recite
\nthe caption -- Ini Ibu, this is mother.<\/p>\n
Fantasy world<\/p>\n
She must be found. Insistent and questioning, he is led to the
\nhulk of a bus in a nearby ravine. Tangled grasses sprout from
\ninside but weathering has done little to dull the lurid
\nadvertisements on its sides (such is the persistence of
\nadvertising culture). This the bus in which his mother died.
\nLewa walks around it slowly and comes face to face with an image
\nof pop idol Madonna. There she is, flying hair, bright red lips.
\nEureka! For Lewa this is mother, care-giver and protector and not
\nthe self-consciously \"bad girl\" adored most especially by young
\nteenage girls in the West.<\/p>\n
In a world where so few pieces of the puzzle fit, where Lewa
\nis without family (his mother is dead and then his father and
\nclose friend die during the course of the film), where the fabric
\nof traditional village life is being riven by strife, the boy
\nfinds solace in modern technology. It is with a camera, a
\nPolaroid, which produces a print pronto, that Lewa secures his
\nview of reality. What you see is what you get after you press the
\nbutton, even if it has gloss finish and looks a bit blanched, as
\ninstant photos tend to.<\/p>\n
Robbed of his childhood by circumstance, Lewa builds a fantasy
\nworld to inhabit and he begins correspondence with an `angel.' In
\nregular letters he writes to her of his pain and longing when
\nthere is no one else around who seems able to listen. In the
\nspace where he sleeps her facsimile floats on a string, like him,
\nconnected by a thread to the world around him.<\/p>\n
Another hero of the west, Mikhail Gorbachev, enters Lewa's
\nlife when the boy discovers his photograph in a magazine. \"If
\nthis man is a hero, why then does he look so confused?\" -- Lewa
\nis such a difficult child, so many questions! The boy has been
\ntold it is the photograph of a great leader, but Lewa looks at
\nhim skeptically. Gorbachev has a hand over his face and his
\nfeatures seem collapsed with worry -- photographers the bane of
\nthe politician in this age of mechanical reproduction. Lewa
\nlearnt early in life to identify the reality in the image over
\nthe reality of the written and spoken word, and he announces
\n`Pictures and reality,' `This book is lies.'<\/p>\n
Windy's Lewa, whom Garin `discovers' two short days before
\nshooting, carries his role with assurance. Several of the
\ncharacters -- Berlian Merah, Kuda Liar, Malaria Tua -- are
\nprofessional actors but the rest of the characters, like Windy,
\nwere chosen from the local people of Sumba.<\/p>\n
In his struggle with the gang of village heavies, led by Kuda
\nLiar who fancies himself as an Elvis Presley crooner, which force
\nthe villagers to hand over their lands, Lewa's father dies. The
\nfuneral takes place. The sequences are actually taken from a
\ndocumentary of a real funeral with a real corpse and real
\nmourners, complete with the ritual killing of a horse.<\/p>\n
Village eccentric<\/p>\n
A short while later Lewa returns to school with the ultimate
\nobjet trouve -- a stiff, his father's corpse. This is my father
\nand this is his photograph, see they are one and the same! His
\nclassmates flee in horror. Why do they accuse me of being bad
\nwhen I only wanted the real face of my father, not his text book
\ncaricature ? No one can answer him and Lewa is showing early
\nsigns of becoming the village eccentric.<\/p>\n
Visually this is an arresting film. Frequent panning shots
\nsweep panoramas which could be `Arabia' with its barren
\nlandscapes, its people and their horses. But no, there is
\nevidence that the twentieth century has arrived when suddenly the
\ncamera finds a downed plane -- and it is `owner-occupied.' You
\nmight think that this piece of modern technology would be no less
\nout of context had it landed on the moon. Not so, these Sumbanese
\nhave readily assimilated this alien shape and taken it unto
\nthemselves, as they have done television, rock'n'roll, the motor
\nlaunch, the photographic camera, and the bus.<\/p>\n
But modernity is not welcome everywhere. As Lewa discovers
\nwhen he wanders after his horse into a neighboring village. He
\n`steals' a photo of a young girl around his own age. Why, he asks
\nher, doesn't she have breasts -- probably comparing her pre-
\nadolescent chest to the advertising images of full-blown women.
\nAdults of the village come upon them and Lewa's stolen photograph
\ndevelops into a full-scale, three-dimensional incident between
\nthe villages. Pride is at stake and things turn ugly. There is a
\nbattle. Like all wars, notes Garin, it is hard to explain why
\npeople fight each other.<\/p>\n
It appears that the battle, like other sequences of this
\nremarkable film, is represented with veracity. The village king
\nwith whom the director negotiated had insisted that nothing
\nshould be `fake.' During the 32 days of production, the film crew
\nwere able to secure images of traditional verisimilitude in a
\ndocumentary scenario. The battle, the ritual Sumbanese battle
\nbetween bareback horsemen armed with lances, marshaled up such
\nenthusiasm that the filmmakers could not put a stop to it, and it
\ncontinued. The battle `finished' in the post-production process
\nin Singapore. It can be risky pointing cameras at people.<\/p>\n
If I have a problem with this impressive film it is with the
\ncontinuity. Perhaps, and it would not be surprising were it so,
\nthe filmmakers (Garin and his crew, who were largely drawn from
\namong his students at the Jakarta Arts Institute) were ultimately
\noverwhelmed with the wealth of raw footage they accumulated.
\nOpening sequences are rather confused and it takes time for the
\nnarrative to find its footing. In effect, it is the problem of
\nfilm balanced between documentary and fiction; the film is driven
\non the one hand by its attention to detail of lifestyle as it is
\nlived, on the other hand these revelations tend to get in the way
\nof the drive of the narrative. Yet, the images of Letter for an
\nAngel, harsh by the director's own admission, stay with you long
\nafter the lights come up. With its desert mountain backdrops,
\nbarren and treeless, it communicates timelessness and
\nplacelessness. Like the scenario of a moral fable on the
\npredicament of pluralism the world over.<\/p>",
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