BEFORE: I'm getting a late start today, because I was out last night drinking at my boss' wife's birthday party, which was held at a bar on a boat over on the Hudson River. It was a long walk back to civilization (8th Ave.) where I could buy my weekly comics and get a subway home, then I had to change the cat litter and take out the trash, so by the time I sat down to watch this film, I only got through about 15 minutes before falling asleep. I'll try again to find where I left off, and finish the story.
Linda Hunt carries over from "Pocahontas 2".
THE PLOT: A young Australian reporter tries to navigate the political turmoil of Indonesia during the rule of President Sukarno with the help of a diminutive photographer.
AFTER: I've tried this year to be a little more politically-oriented, given the state our union these days. Early in the year I watched "Reds", a film about the Russian Revolution, and followed that later with "Seven Years in Tibet" (with Communist China taking over Tibet), and a couple of Cold War-era spy films like "The Ipcress File", and some newer terrorist-themed films like "Body of Lies" before getting back to American political films like "Snowden", "Wiener" and "Trumped". After that came "Our Brand Is Crisis" (set in South America) and "The Crying Game" (Ireland) before hitting three assassination-based films: "Vantage Point", "Bobby" and "Jackie". (Wait, don't forget "Nashville"...)
Maybe that's all too much politics for me, because by the time I got to this one, set during the 1965 Indonesian overthrow of President Sukarno, I just don't really care any more. I've never even heard of this Sukarno, I know nothing about Indonesian history or politics, and I couldn't keep straight which faction was backed by the Communists and which was the populist faction. To make things worse, the Communist Party of Indonesia was called the PKI, and I can't even tell how that acronym is derived from those words, and Sukarno was replaced by Suharto, and those names are just too much alike.
So I spent the whole film not knowing who to root for or what was really going on, or how this all made a fitting background for the romance between an Australian reporter and a British (?) embassy worker who might be a spy. And then there's the photographer/camera-man who's half-Chinese and half-Australian and might also be a spy. Jeez, is everyone in this damn country a spy, or what? Plus this camera-man was a man notably played by a woman (Linda Hunt was the first and only person to win an Oscar for playing the other gender, but I have a feeling more nominees like this are on the way...) and while this was a champion casting move for those who favor things of a transgender nature, it was also a bit of stunt casting, meaning that it was so distracting that it ended up taking some of the focus away from the performance. I mean, in the back of my mind I always knew that was a woman playing a man, so it was hard for me to see it as anything else but that.
I recognized the Vangelis music "L'Enfant" from the album "Opera Sauvage" (which I used to listen to frequently in college when I needed to relax) but it seemed very out of place here - when I hear new age music like Vangelis, I think of futuristic films like "Blade Runner", not a political piece set in the mid-1960's. That also was a little distracting for me.
But hey, congratulations on making political revolution really boring.
Also starring Mel Gibson (last seen in "What Women Want"), Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "Ghostheads"), Bill Kerr (last seen in "Peter Pan"), Michael Murphy (last seen in "Nashville"), Noel Ferrier, Bembol Roco, Paul Sonkkila, Ali Nur, Mike Empirie, Kuh Ledesma, Domingo Landicho.
RATING: 3 out of 10 rocks thrown at the embassy
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