Movie madness: The highs and lows of the silver screen
Recently, my couch potato housemates and I were channel hopping through Kabelvision's cornucopia of channels when we stumbled upon what is perhaps the worst soap opera ever made, namely America's The Bold and the Beautiful. While we were watching, one of the characters, in a fit of pique no doubt exacerbated by the tightness of his facelift, admonished his similarly stretched colleague thus, "I can't believe the way you're acting Jeff," which I must say amused us all enormously because we couldn't quite believe the way that Jeff was acting either.
Alas, most of Indonesia's dramas and soap operas (or sinetrons as they are known) seem to model themselves upon The Bold and the Beautiful's dazzling example. They all feature the same ludicrous family face-offs, epilepsy inducing camera zooms, endless trips to the hospital and unconscionable acting as their illustrious American progenitor. Many of the characters even have Western names, which further accentuates their total disconnection from Indonesian life. Undoubtedly, part of the problem is the cult of celebrity here which seeks to promote fantasy, fairy-tale lifestyles and which values pretty and handsome faces above all else. Notwithstanding their lack of decent acting chops, these sinetron divas spread their already wafer thin talent across CDs, movies, modeling assignments and toothpaste advertisements and in the process demonstrate a kind of inverted versatility, i.e. can't sing, can't dance and can't act.
Similarly, many local movies are on a par with the Indo-soaps and are ostensibly unlikely to win the old, "Two thumbs up" from Roger Ebert. Three recent offerings from the local film industry, namely Apa Artinya Cinta? (What Does Love Mean?), Mirror and Belahan Jiwa (Soul mates) received, respectively, one, zero and zero stars out of five from the Jakarta Post's film critic, Paul F. Agusta, who felt compelled to pen such scathing comments as, "A complete mess", "A failure", "Incredibly overdone" and, "Avoid".
However, it's not all doom and creative gloom out there. Away from the teenage froth and stillborn scripts there are local writers, directors and actors with both talent and artistic integrity and it is possible to see the pains of everyday Indonesian life reflected on the screen without resorting to watching policemen endlessly smashing in petty criminals faces on reality TV cop shows. The movie Arisan managed to grapple with the taboo social issue of homosexuality sensitively and yet be hugely successful at the same time. The historical drama Ca Bau Kan was a sumptuously filmed examination of life in old Batavia under Dutch rule. Also, Christine Hakim and Garin Nugroho's superb Daun Di Atas Bantal was a grimy, warts-and-all evocation of proletarian life as affecting and in-your-face as anything by celebrated British directors Mike Lee and Ken Loach. All these movies are available on DVD with full subtitles for the knockdown Glodok price of Rp 7,000 per disk... erm.. sorry... I mean for the full retail price of about Rp 35,000 per disk.
Another of the more positive aspects of the film scene here is the annual Jakarta International Film Festival (commonly known as JIFFest) which this year runs from Dec. 10 until Dec. 18 JIFFest, whilst not exactly Canne-esque in size and spectacle, is nonetheless a genuinely international film festival which draws in fascinating movies from all over the world as well as featuring emerging local talent and talks by visiting directors. Nearly all the movies (aside from the Indonesian ones, alas) feature English subtitles and JIFFest 2005 will no doubt make the run-up to this year's Christmas bombings as enjoyable as it always has done.
In an attempt to curtail any pandemonium at the ticket office, such as the memorable near riot that occurred at JIFFest several years ago when hundreds of Indonesian punks tried to force their way in to see the Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and the Fury, this year's festival features a season-ticket system. A gold membership ticket, costing Rp 100,000, will allow you to see ten films, silver membership costs Rp 65,000 for five films and white membership, Rp 30,000 for two films. Daily cards will also be available on the door and will cost Rp 20,000, Rp 35,000 and Rp 50,000 for one, two or three movies respectively. The gold, silver and white (white?!) cards are available for purchase from Nov. 24 until Dec. 9, i.e. now. The cards can be bought at Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) in Cikini and at Aksara bookshops in Kemang, Plaza Indonesia and Cilandak Town Square. Get yourself down to one of these outlets with a friend, grab a copy of the official program and decide what movies you want to check out over a coffee. I'll be going for the gold membership myself. At the time of writing I could get no information about this year's films, however, if you cyber-web yourself over to www.jiffest.org., there should be some info. available by now. Happy viewing. -- Simon Pitchforth