Everything's nice for director Harry

Monique Natalia, Contributor, Jakarta

The cafe, located in a popular South Jakarta shopping center, is still empty at 10 in the morning. Good, I think to myself, I'm early. But just as I'm ordering, Harry "Dagoe" Suharyadi arrives, wearing an orange T-shirt, cargo pants, running shoes and green- tinted sunglasses.

"Sorry," he apologizes as he gives me the standard "celebrity" cheek-to-cheek greeting, "I'm a bit late."

We sit down and talk about the 31-year-old filmmaker's pride and joy, Pachinko and Everyone's Happy, a film he wrote, produced, directed, edited and starred in.

We also discuss his children's musical Mencari Pelangi, which won eight awards at the 1998 Indonesian Sinetron Festival, including one for best director, and his short film Happy Ending, which was an official selection at the Toronto International Short Film Festival, as well as at film festivals in Singapore, Pusan and Palm Springs in 1996 ("This is my stance against violence in the media.")

If you are wondering about his nickname, "dagoe" or "dagu" is the Indonesian word for chin and was a nickname given to him by his college buddies. And the multitalented Harry (aside from making films, he used to write short stories for a children's tabloid and plays classical guitar) does not mind the nickname, and has even come to use it himself.

What he does mind are people who think they are film critics and go about tearing down the struggling Indonesian movie industry.

"They (the film critics) compare Indonesian cinema to foreign films. They don't understand that making a film in Indonesia itself is nothing short of a miracle. It's so expensive to make a film here. We don't have the supporting infrastructure necessary to produce a good film. Most post-production has to be done abroad and it costs dollars," he explains.

What does he think of the negative reviews of Pachinko, a film that tells the story of a woman working in adult movies to earn the money for plastic surgery on her eyes, a geisha mother, a pachinko-obsessed grandmother and a happy-go-lucky young Indonesian?

"I feel sorry for them," he answers passionately. "Why were (these film reviewers) hired if they do not understand how to criticize a film? Criticizing a film is not just saying what is good and what sucks! It is finding the real potential in the film, what the message the director is trying to get across and whether it is getting through to the audience."

His passion can be understood considering that the making of the movie, which Harry calls an art film, was quite a juggling act for the director, trying to keep everyone involved in the production happy.

The project started in 1999, when the Japanese Culture Department granted Harry a fellowship to live in Japan for nine months. He left with the ambition of making a film, and after getting to know the people in Japan and studying the culture for six months, he hit upon the idea for Pachinko.

But why make a film about a geisha and a porn star? How about children, for example, recalling his past success with Mencari Pelangi, which tells the story of young boy who polishes shoes but dreams of becoming a writer.

"Living in Tokyo, I was surrounded by those things. There were no children to be found wandering around in Tokyo. They were too busy with school and extra lessons," he explains while sipping his strawberry juice. "Through my new acquaintances in Tokyo, most of whom were female, I learned that their main ambition was to become beautiful, to have big, beautiful eyes. 'There are lots of people who are smart,' they would say, 'so I need to be smart and beautiful.' Being smart just don't cut it anymore."

As for the geisha part, he did some research that involved renting 20 films (including documentaries) about geisha, reading books and also meeting and talking to a real geisha about her life.

"I needed to do that. I couldn't go out there and suddenly decide to make a film about a geisha and not know anything about it. I didn't want to make another tourist film."

This is one of the many reasons that Pachinko was made in black and white, why there is almost no camera movement and why the camera angle is so low. "I was going for simplicity. Why? Because the story itself is already so complex and full of conflict and emotion. I didn't want it to seem too pretty," Harry explains.

"Also, by watching Japanese films, mostly Ozu Yasujiro's films (Ozu is a legendary Japanese director whose films include Tokyo Story), I learned that most Japanese filmmakers have their own style of cinematography and their own language."

Armed with the results of his research, Harry went ahead and started shooting his film. Most of his crew were Japanese and this proved to be somewhat of a headache for the director.

"Being Japanese, they felt that they knew better than me, an Indonesian, about geisha. At first they would come up to me and ask why I did this or why I made the geisha do that, and so on. But to shut them up all I had to do was ask whether any of them had actually met a geisha, and showed them the 20 films I'd rented."

But this was a minor difficulty compared to the one he faced halfway through the production. The cost of the film was going way over the budget, which was coming out of Harry's own pocket. The amount needed to finish the film was the exact amount he had in his bank account from the fellowship, so he finished the film and spent the rest of the month sleeping on park benches and in train stations in freezing temperatures.

Harry's plan for the movie was to show it in galleries around Indonesia on his own projector. "Because I meant it to be an art film, I didn't think that it would be played in movie theaters. I was prepared, I even bought my own projector in Japan," he says.

As it turned out, his film was met with an enthusiastic reception. Studio 21, the largest movie theater chain in Indonesia, agreed to carry the film.

"I had tears in my eyes when I saw them putting up the (film's) banner," Harry says.

Even being distributed by Studio 21, it will be difficult for Harry to recoup the some Rp 1.4 billion he spent making Pachinko. This, however, does not trouble is not of great concern to Harry, for whom money is the last consideration when choosing projects.

"I became a director not only because I wanted to make a living from it. Being a director doesn't mean that I will take any directing job as long as there's money in it. Every time I create something, it has to be according to the morality that I have as a director and as a human being."

Instead, he will only direct films that he can relate to or that have a close connection to him. "I'd rather make a film about something that I'm really familiar with. Something that is close to my daily life and to other people's daily lives, something that is really happening in real life, in the world. Something real."

He clearly managed to portray "something real" in Pachinko because Yomiuri Shinbun, one of Japan's biggest newspapers, called the movie a modern-day Tokyo Story

"I was so honored when the I heard that. Ozu Yasujiro is my idol!" With Pachinko garnering mainly positive reviews, Harry has clearly pleased more than himself and the crew of the movie.