'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.