JIFFest: A quality cinematic outing for capital's children
By Tam Notosusanto
JAKARTA (JP): The kids are certainly not left out at the Jakarta International Film Festival. They have their own shows to see: movies the festival's organizers have specially prepared for them. And these are not animated flicks with cute creatures and heroic figures in fantasyland.
These are films with real settings, real problems and child characters as real as the ones in the audience themselves.
Take Wide Awake. Set in a Catholic school in a suburb of Philadelphia, the movie may not immediately strike a chord with most Jakarta moviegoers. But as its main character, 10-year-old Joshua Beal (Joseph Cross), steps up to the foreground, we cannot help rooting for this cherubic, wavy-haired blond.
Joshua takes us inside his school, where he spends most of his days studying, playing and reflecting. Amid stiff nuns and bratty boys, he has his closest allies: his best friend David (Timothy Reifsnyder), and a cool nun (Rosie O'Donnell), who explains the Bible by way of describing a baseball game.
On the home front, Joshua has loving parents (Denis Leary and Dana Delany), who are both doctors, and a teenage sister (Julia Stiles), who is alternately affectionate and mean toward him. But Joshua's greatest pal and protector is his grandfather (Robert Loggia), who spends so much quality time together with him.
When his grandfather dies, Joshua's world seems to be falling apart. Confused as to how he can channel his grief, Joshua decides to go on a quest: he wants to find and meet with God, to make sure that his grandfather is well taken care of.
Director M. Night Shyamalan, two years before he became a household name with The Sixth Sense, shows his preoccupation with children and the issue of death. Wide Awake and The Sixth Sense do have so much resemblance, right down to their similarly frail, tormented-looking young protagonists.
Although dealing with quite heavy material here, Wide Awake stays light and soft; it wants to show how a little kid handles trauma without having to traumatize its young audience. Maintained at a child's point-of-view, the film demonstrates how a youngster's coming-of-age journey, however bitter, is always funny, wonderful and magically spiritual.
The Mighty is another film that depicts how youngsters survive painful and difficult circumstances. Its central character, Max (Elden Henson), is a humongously oversized 15-year-old who is a passive target of all taunts and teases. His life changes when he meets a new schoolmate, the disabled, terminally ill Kevin (Kieran Culkin). Kevin helps out with Max's reading problems, in exchange for company and a pair of healthy legs. "You need a brain, I need legs," he tells Max, and so he enjoys going around town on top of Max's strong shoulders.
They become an inseparable duo, bound together by their love of the tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. British director Peter Chelsom paints this wonderful picture of friendship and mutual symbiosis with the kids' imagination that they are themselves the Knights of Camelot, battling society's evils with their swords and armor.
And this film is illuminated by the two young stars' passionate performances. Culkin is as cute and winsome as his more famous brother, only he is less superficial and arguably a much better actor. But Henson is the center of attention here, bringing earnestness and emotion to his character that makes us feel every bit of the heartbreak Max seems to be concealing inside.
The Mighty is made even more special by Sharon Stone's wonderful turn as Kevin's grief-stricken mother, a performance that earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. And fans of The X-Files may find delight in seeing Gillian Anderson here as you have never seen her before.
A little Swedish movie called Nature's Warrior is also slotted to fill in the children's fun time. Part surreal fantasy, part environmental campaign, the film tells of Kim (Robin Mildoff), a 13-year-old boy who is fascinated with nature and spends most of his time in the great outdoors.
A dreamlike encounter with an Indian chief suddenly inspires him to be a crusader for the protection of nature. Kim leaves home, sets his dwelling in a makeshift cabin near a lake, and begins his new occupation.
Beginning with picking up garbage left by irresponsible tourists at the natural resort, Kim goes on to the extremes: sabotaging animal traps and scaring off potential hunters with his bow and arrows. Director Stefan Jarl keeps his movie from being a blatant public service announcement about nature's protection.
The beautiful cinematography and the tranquil scenes, characteristic of Carroll Ballard's nature movies, help make the film a solid work of cinema.
As the festival offers adult moviegoers a wealth of movies they do not regularly find at their local cinema, these three films give the younger visitors a chance to check out movies that invite them to think and feel, a rare treat that should come our way more often.