Multiplex movies in Jakarta: The year in review
Multiplex movies in Jakarta: The year in review
By Jane Freebury
JAKARTA (JP): Dangling from cliff faces with Sylvester
Stallone, tumbling down white-water rapids with Meryl Streep, or
re-creating a real-life incident with a scary flight on a
disabled craft to the moon and back with Tom Hanks, Hollywood has
performed death-defying stunts at the movies this year. Thrills
for the audience with the stars for company.
Jakarta is home to the action movie and its sibling the
action-adventure. As with any film genre, there are examples of
the good, the bad and the lousy. You decide on the percentages!
In Jakarta this year there was some good action and adventure,
with films like Clear and Present Danger, River Wild and Apollo
13 -- especially Apollo 13 -- on the silver screen. Giving you
something to think about while you react viscerally to a stream
of precipitous situations, without stopping for pause -- the die-
hard formula of the action movie.
No incidents in mainstream cinema in Jakarta '95 -- no
bannings and no censorship controversies. What a surprise to see
Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction here. Same active ingredients
(lots of meat and gristle, regrettably), same production
techniques (fast and furious), but something there was different.
This film won the 1994 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival,
probably the apogee of international art house film festivals. It
also received an Oscar for the Best Original Screenplay.
Hollywood production has always been a producer-led enterprise,
making it distinct from, say, the European production scene.
Quentin Tarantino, laden with talent as a screenwriter and
director, brings an intelligence quotient to his screen
narratives that transcends the trashiness of his subjects, such
as the well-planned heist that ends in bloody mayhem for the
burglars (Reservoir Dogs, definitely still his best film); a
madcap, impromptu hold-up of people dining at a restaurant (Part
1, Pulp Fiction). Pulp like this holds it own against texts with
far loftier concerns. Back to Tarantino shortly.
Fashionable as it is in some quarters to knock Hollywood as an
encroachment on indigenous social and cultural values, the
critique evades an important point -- that Hollywood is the
cinema, and that there is no other global cultural industry or
entertainment institution to rival it. Bombay might be big but
its influence does not travel any large distance beyond India and
her millions. Okay, Hong Kong action has an overseas presence but
let's face it, it's slight compared to Hollywoods slick products
that are simultaneously released right around the world to
millions of satisfied consumers.
The U.S. entertainment industry, a massive export earner, is
the textual and institutional system, which each and every
filmmaker around the world either emulates or parodies,
celebrates or opposes. Like the social institution of language,
Hollywood cinema is a cultural institution and a shared language
which all must enter before they are allowed to innovate. Love it
or hate it, filmmakers can never quite leave it, for if they do
they risk leaving the audience behind.
This being said, press reports are coming in that 1995 has not
been kind to Hollywood. Box-office receipts are down. Anticipated
successes like Judge Dredd and Johnny Mnemonic did not deliver,
despite major star props Sylvester Stallone and Keanu Reaves.
Prominent science fiction writer William Gibson as screenwriter
and artist Robert Longo as director were imported from their
fields to work on Mnemonic, but even with this outside talent
there was insufficient zest.
An adaptation of the comic strip 2000 AD on which Judge Dredd
is based had been long awaited but, in the event, failed audience
expectations. Not because it was a case of another cartoon
brought to life, another Batman, or another Dick Tracy, but
because the film's treatment of the key character sank the movie.
Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever fared better. Having the
backdrop of Gotham City already credibly established in the
public imagination probably helps. Attention on the key
character, Val Kilmer's Batman, was deflected to others -- a
plausible Robin (Chris O'Donnell), an impossible villain in Jim
Carrey's Riddler (who can rattle off his lines almost as whipper-
snipper fast as Robin Williams), an asymmetrical Tommy Lee Jones
sidelining, and an aerobicised Nicole Kidman as Dr. Meridian.
Good value.
Drama
Human drama came to Jakarta in Tony Scott's Crimson Tide and
Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption, both solid respectable
films, sacrificing possibilities for more action for a little
psychological complexity and a bit of socio-historical detail.
Crimson Tide with its smart script -- apparently extensively
re-written by Quentin Tarantino, although the screenplay is
credited to Michael Schiffer -- pitted 1950s values (embodied by
Gene Hackman) against 1990s values (oozed by Denzel Washington).
Shawshank was an unexpected modest pleasure. Though both these
films had the requisite active ingredients to make a big and
noisy action movie -- a number of people in a confined space
(i.e. submarine and prison) with the possibility of an implacable
killing force unleashed -- both developed into taut dramas.
Die Hard with Vengeance jumped into action mode before you'd
settled into your seat. A bomb went off straightaway and let up
was refused until the final credits. A nutter called Simon
(Jeremy Irons again) had McClane running all over town taking
telephone calls to answer riddles about bombs set to go off. Too
fast and furious this time, I much preferred Die Hard the first.
Die Hard with Vengeance lacked the intensity and intelligence of
its predecessors and was at its most rewarding when people were
talking -- when Bruce Willis was sparring verbally with Samuel
Jackson about race and power relationships.
Samuel Jackson was impressive in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp
Fiction too. Because of its wit and intelligence and
cineliteracy, not because of its action and extreme violence,
this film was among the best films screened in Jakarta in 1995.
This is Jakarta's B-grade staple fare in terms of content, but
turned smarter, more knowing and nastier, anti-humanist,
nostalgic and self-referential, fairly scudding along but with a
formidable screenplay at the waterline and a lot of talent on
deck.
Quentin Tarantino's acceptance in the mainstream is
symptomatic of Hollywood's interest in the independent filmmaking
strain, in its search for innovation. As Hollywood has appeared
to depend too much of late on its capacities for spectacle, its
star machine and on its overseas audiences to make a profit it
probably needs to import talent such as Tarantino pronto to
offset a decline in quality and competitiveness of product.
Tarantino's next film is eagerly awaited. He has yet to write
substantial roles for women in his films -- aside from Patricia
Arquette's Alabama in his screenplay for True Romance. Will he
write women in next time?
A substantial role was scripted for Demi Moore in Disclosure.
This was the thinking person's Fatal Attraction, which involved a
sophisticated and realistic debate about issues of sexual
harassment and gender politics. It probably looked like soft porn
from the sales pitch, but it was a lot more than that. River Wild
was much less satisfying, action and adventure aspects aside.
Meryl is such an excellent actress it was a pity to see her
carrying a very so-so movie.
Failures
There was a time when films with obtrusive style, such as the
avant-garde, were sure to be commercial failures, because form
has traditionally been subordinate to content in the movies. Luc
Besson is one of a new generation of French filmmakers who, like
colleague Jean Jacques Beineix (Diva, Betty Blue), owe much to
the codes of advertising and to the iconographies of pop culture.
The success of his film Leon has brought this director closer
to the mainstream still. Besson's The Big Blue and Subway earned
him a reputation as pure stylist, but postmodernist cinema needs
a political and cultural dimension to prevail. Good looking,
witty cinema it may be, but for those who knew him before,
Besson hasn't come a very long way since he began in this same
vein. His 1985 film Subway was better.
Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead looked good too, betraying
a fascination with surface effects. Self-conscious style and
visual quotation from other westerns made me recall the preferred
past pleasures of Shane and The Searchers. Former Evil Dead
director Raimi had stars to work with -- Sharon Stone, Gene
Hackman -- but lacked the substance of a strong script, with
ideas.
Forrest Gump is a reprise on recent United States history
through the vehicle of the life story of an individual. But how
can a such person, lacking understanding of or motivation for his
participation in historical events help explain the currents of
change that swept the West during those years?
Gump had the good fortune to take part in every significant
moment of recent history -- except the space race, covered
elsewhere, in Apollo 13. Gump was the first film since Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf to attract 13 nominations for the
Academy Awards. It took out six, and with this Hollywood slipped
two steps back since Philadelphia.
Kevin Costner was hero of his world of water, moving around
his oddly-shaped catamaran with prodigious agility, fending off
ugly villains. But, apart from the feat of having brought it all
off without a glimpse of landfall (until the conclusion), the set
construction and the exaggerated malice of Dennis Hopper, the
film didn't have a lot to recommend it. Good effects. Poor
script. The Waterworld extravaganza wouldn't have lost anything
from a little jauntiness. Long before Kevin Costner headed off
after things had been put to rights, you realized it was just a
big romp after all. Why didn't he ?
Mel Gibson in his directorial and starring roles in Braveheart
managed a wink and a nod to the audience - did you catch it?
Braveheart had other virtues too -- a good script which
developed the relationships between hero, the leading lady and
others to good effect and some fine tensely dramatic moments were
established with slow-motion camera and taut editing. A rousing
good movie.
Films like Wolfgang Petersen's Outbreak and Roger Donaldson's
Species sowed their unsettling seeds and activated audience
paranoias. Some terrible things happened to the body -- a site of
chaos -- in these two films. Both were creditable films, but
heavy-going along with all those action movies. For other
pleasures we turned to Robert Altman's Ready-to-Wear (Pret-a-
Porter) -- wonderful to see Marcello Mastroianni again -- to
laugh instead, at the expense of others. And we turned to Gillian
Armstrong's handsome and wholesome Little Women for the pleasures
of good performances from Susan Sarandon and her "girls", and
subtle consideration of women's concerns.
A Walk in the Clouds drifted into Jakarta at year's end. It
was directed by Alfonso Arau whose previous delightful Like Water
for Chocolate told of love and longing in the kitchen. But this
latest film is a Mexican telenovella, with a gentle heroine who
tries to hide her pregnancy from her family. Keanu Reeves (who
was not responsible), a gringo, then wanders into her life via a
family-owned vineyard -- and suffers many indignities on her
behalf. When all is lost to the family in a fire which engulfs
the entire plantation, Keanu recovers a single remaining live
root. Brandishing it aloft, he steps forward to save the day --
which he does. What a disappointment after Like Water for
Chocolate!
Had there been an art-house cinema in Jakarta in 1995 there
might have been a window for other films as yet unscreened here.
Films such as Blue Sky, D'Artagnan's Daughter, Ed Wood, Death and
the Maiden, Muriel's Wedding, The Madness of King George, The
Neon Bible, Shallow Grave, The City of Lost Children, The
Postman, Six Degrees of Separation and The Silences of the
Palace.
Anyhow, the year is not quite over and you can still get to
GoldenEye. James Bond, you and the cinema, are back in business.
Subentra, the sole distributor of Hollywood movies in
Indonesia, was approached for a complete list of the films
screened at Century 21 this year together with a list of the top
ten films at the box office to date. Subentra declined, citing
negative film reviews printed in The Jakarta Post.