What is right and wrong in 'Mencari Pelangi'

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): It is easy to point out where Mencari Pelangi (Looking for the Rainbow) goes wrong: confusing writing, uneven directing, awkward acting. And whether it is a musical -- like the filmmakers intended it to be -- or not is really debatable. Which makes one wonder what it is doing nabbing several awards at last December's Indonesian Television Film Festival, including the Vidia Utama Award for Best Television Film.

Take another look, and you'll see that the jurors at the festival were sober when they made their pick. Mencari Pelangi is really onto something. Beneath its surface of technical bungle, the film takes the audience on a little child's existentialist journey in search of his identity, liberty and life's meaning.

The central character here is Danang (Irwan Arianto), a young shoeshine boy who, when not cleaning the footwear of passersby at a railway station, finds pleasure in composing fables and tales that he tells to his customers. Everything should be fine and dandy for Danang, except for one thing: no one will listen to his stories.

"Nobody appreciates stories around here," he complains, after yet another customer abandons him in the middle of his storytelling.

He despairs, because storytelling seems to be his raison d'etre, it's his means of escape from his dull, routine life. Danang can precisely describe the daily goings-on at the railway station, which are virtual recreations of the previous days' occurrences. He remembers by heart every denizen of that station: the beggar, the janitor, the fruit seller, all of them come to the station to do what they do every day.

Screenwriter Rayya Makarim has created a small cosmos out of the railway station. It contains characters who meet every day and have the same conversations. The fruit seller goes into a bargain strife with a thrifty buyer, the civil servant has sardonic chats with the blind beggar, the janitor sits near a mysterious lady dressed in black, and Danang's father (Sena A. Utoyo), a porter at the station, carries luggage and at the same time offers the services of his son to his customers.

Danang is surrounded by this suffocating deja vu every day. Much like the Bill Murray character in the thought-provoking comedy Groundhog Day, he wants to break away. But he can't, because his stories have to find dedicated listeners first to be able to carry him out of his misery.

Until he discovers what may be the solution to his yearning: a nameless storyteller (Kaharuddin Syah), who comes to the station and delivers magnificent, captivating tales to the passing crowd. It doesn't take long for Danang to come forward and ask the stranger to teach him how to work wonders with storytelling. And the boy is showered with profound remarks such as: "The world in your stories, it's entirely within you. Only you can make it be or not be."

Danang becomes the Jedi knight in training for the ultimate craft of storytelling, while the storyteller acts as his Obi-Wan Kenobi-like mentor. "You don't pay enough attention, you only think you do," the storyteller advises his apprentice. "When telling a story, you have to pay attention to the listeners around you. It's to them you are telling the story. And you will make each one of them feel special."

The film has a well-grounded concept, with the boy's quest for perfection that progresses toward his eventual triumph when he finally reaches his goal. Makarim constructs her story arch well. And she, along with Sitok Srengenge, who supplied some of the storyteller's speech, really has a way with words.

But trouble comes with the world of the train station she created, and how director Harry Dagoe Suharyadi materialized it. Its population is as real as the one in Sesame Street: the porter who tap dances on the train, the civil servant who wears his civil servant's uniform every day, and so on, they don't belong to the Indonesian reality. Which is fine, if the filmmakers had kept it that way. But in trot Danang and his younger sister Gati (Rimarsha Nugrafita), who look exactly how real-life street kids are, and they disfigure the imagery that way.

Yet Danang is too busy to swim with boys his age or explore the neighborhood like regular street children do. This little guy does not know how to have fun, and for some absurd reason, he is confined to the railway station that bores him to death.

This film would have worked best if the creators had not spent too much time going in the pointless direction of building up the train station universe, which eventually comes out half-baked. Instead Mencari Pelangi should have focused on its neglected potential: the relationship between the children and their father, the relationship between Danang and the storyteller, and especially the relationship between Danang and Gati, which is terribly underexplored.

Good acting and good casting would have helped too. Irwan Arianto's stoic and tormented performance is certainly not much to marvel at, while Kaharudin Syah ruins his role by spitting out lines he does not seem to comprehend, coming out as a hectoring schoolmaster instead of a wise instructor.

Of course, the audience should know that this hour-long film was made on a screenplay that was written in four days, and was shot in only a week. It is a project requested by private TV station Anteve, which was looking for a musical film to air on its anniversary. No decent film should come out of such a inhuman, improbable production schedule, and amazingly, Mencari Pelangi is still a decent, if ungainly, movie.

Those who missed the two times ANteve broadcast this film will have another chance. The Usmar Ismail Film Center will screen Mencari Pelangi, along with the four television films it defeated for the Vidia Award: Dalam Bayangan Ibu (In Mother's Shadow), Penari (Dancer), Kado Istimewa (Special Gift) and Buku Catatanku (My Diary), from Feb. 24 through Feb. 28.