'Millennium Angst' at JIFFest

'Millennium Angst' at JIFFest

By Oren Murphy

JAKARTA (JP): Among the many categories of films on view at
the Jakarta International Film Festival (JIFFest) this week is
"Millennium Angst".

Three films are being offered up under this heading, each
portraying a decidedly different vision of what the new
millennium heralds. Two of the films, Tamas et Juli by Hungarian
director Ildiko Enyedi and The Wall by Belgian director Alain
Berliner, are part of a larger cooperative effort titled 2000
Seen By.... The third film, The Hole is an independent project by
Taiwan national director Tsai Ming-Liang.

As the category heading Millennium Angst implies, the future
is not bright. It is telling that none of the three films being
shown presents the future and the new millennium as a Golden Age.

Fear of the future is nothing new to filmmaking. Films from
Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Ridley Scott's Bladerunner have been
permeated by a dread of what's to come: increasing
dehumanization, alienation and isolation. The films struggle with
these issues and often find redemptive power in human
relationships.

The Hole presents a vision of Taiwan submerged in perpetual
rain and feelings of isolation. It is a week before the new
millennium and people have been evacuated from the area due to
the spread of a disease which causes people to scuttle around the
floor like cockroaches.

The story centers on two tenants in a rundown apartment
building who barely know each other and rarely speak. A plumber
arrives one day to check the pipes in the floor of the upstairs
tenant and in doing so, leaves a hole which becomes a point of
contact between the upstairs and downstairs tenants.

Action in the film is dedicated to killing cockroaches,
preventing wallpaper from peeling off the walls, catching drips
and eating instant noodles.

Fortunately, this somewhat bleak social calendar is spiced up
by garish fantasy sequences in which the two tenants imagine
themselves into the world of Hollywood-style song and dance
routines.

It's joyously superficial, filled with glamour, music and
dancing in the elevators. Clearly for the director though,
imagination is a final refuge for color and vivacity as our
deteriorating environment encroaches on us, increasingly
alienating us from our sense of humanity. Happy New Year!

Tamas et Juli portrays life in a small Hungarian mining town
and is perhaps the most lyrical of the three films. The story
focuses on a young coal miner, Tamas, and the kindergarten
teacher, Juli, whom he is in love with. The plot gently unfolds
by oscillating between the spring and summer of their courtship
and the following winter in which the new millennium will arrive.

Both characters are willful and proud and spend weeks on end
not speaking with each other. Tamas in particular seems to have a
knack for making an ass of himself. This is painfully exemplified
in a scene where he is waiting in the snow with flowers for Juli
as an apology for a previous misdeed. She descends from the bus
and flashes him a beautiful smile to which he responds, "Why are
you looking so dumb?"

The fact that the new millennium is impending seems largely
irrelevant to the development of Tamas and Juli's relationship.
It gains an importance when Juli sends a letter of reconciliation
proposing they meet on New Years. Tamas, however, is slotted to
work in the mines on New Years and it appears that their
relationship will suffer yet another and perhaps final blow.

The film has a meditative calm about it, underscored by the
beautiful cinematography. The director draws from the deep well
of the human psyche to find the immortal qualities of human
interactions.

In The Wall, director Alain Berliner portrays the conflict in
Belgium between the francophone Walloons and the Flemish. Albert,
a French speaker and the movie's protagonist, owns a French fries
stand on the linguistic border between the two communities. He
turns up at his stand on the morning of Dec. 31, 1999 to find
that his stand has been split in half by a wall separating the
two communities.

The wall is the government's solution to the centuries old
conflict, and it leaves Albert on the wrong side with his new
Flemish girlfriend. Having crossed the border to the francophone
side with the aid of a little magic-realism, Albert is confronted
with a spectrum of irrationality and prejudices in his friends
and family which he finds himself unprepared for.

The wall as a symbol seems a little out-of-date as we have
just celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Berlin Wall's
collapse, but it is a poignant reminder that anything is possible
when ignorance and prejudice are involved. It is telling and,
given global history in the past ten years, perhaps appropriate
that Berliner has chosen this as his vision of the new
millennium.

While none of the three films will leave you skipping for joy,
they are all fascinating and well-worth seeing. Tamas et Juli in
particular beautifully renders the subtle emotional underpinnings
of its characters. Tamas et Juli shows at 19:30 on Nov. 28. The
Wall is on at 19:30 on Nov. 22. The Hole can be seen at 19:30 on
Nov. 26. All three are being shown at Graha Bakti Budaya TIM.