Guy Hamilton is a foreign correspondent for the Australian wire service in Jakarta in 1965, who is befriended by Billy Kwan a local photographer and Jill Bryant, a British cultural attaché. Guy finds himself falling for Jill, but what will happen to Java if the communist rebels try to overthrow the increasingly corrupt President Sukarno ?
This is a very handsome old-style drama / romance set against the backdrop of war, and was the first of several high quality movies around this period about obsessive photo-journalists in war zones (see also Under Fire, The Killing Fields and Salvador). Gibson and Weaver are both extremely young, beautiful and expressive in it, but the real star is Hunt, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her extraordinary turn as Kwan. Only rarely are actors capable of playing another gender/ethnicity without it being either comical or disastrous, but Hunt is sublime here as the puppet-master of the film whose carefully orchestrated plans never quite work out and whose empathy with the suffering of his people is both profound and tragic. The setting is vibrant and unique - Indonesia in the sixties, having not long thrown off Dutch colonialism, and the power politics of the ruling National Party, the military and the communist PKI rebels. Whilst the film was shot in Australia and the Philippines (it was banned in Indonesia until 2000), it recreates the period in stunning detail - slums, sweaty cramped offices, seedy bars, plush hotels, poverty rubbing shoulders with elegance, Russell Boyd's terrific camera-work documents a country full of contradictions and possibilities. Equally good is the use of music, with Maurice Jarre's evocative ethnic percussion score, Kwan's love of Kiri Te Kanawa and a haunting sequence where a besotted Guy and Jill race home from a party to the strains of the Vangelis piece L'Infant, from his Opera Sauvage album. The film is something of an acquired taste I think - as a straight thriller it's not that exciting and it doesn't really have any big impressive set pieces. Where it scores for me is in atmosphere and mood; trying to recreate a place and a time and populate it with iconic characters - the idealistic writer, the glamorous woman, the enigmatic stranger. It may not be entirely successful but it's a unique and intriguing movie. Written by Christoper Koch, David Williamson and Weir, based on Koch's book.
This is a very handsome old-style drama / romance set against the backdrop of war, and was the first of several high quality movies around this period about obsessive photo-journalists in war zones (see also Under Fire, The Killing Fields and Salvador). Gibson and Weaver are both extremely young, beautiful and expressive in it, but the real star is Hunt, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her extraordinary turn as Kwan. Only rarely are actors capable of playing another gender/ethnicity without it being either comical or disastrous, but Hunt is sublime here as the puppet-master of the film whose carefully orchestrated plans never quite work out and whose empathy with the suffering of his people is both profound and tragic. The setting is vibrant and unique - Indonesia in the sixties, having not long thrown off Dutch colonialism, and the power politics of the ruling National Party, the military and the communist PKI rebels. Whilst the film was shot in Australia and the Philippines (it was banned in Indonesia until 2000), it recreates the period in stunning detail - slums, sweaty cramped offices, seedy bars, plush hotels, poverty rubbing shoulders with elegance, Russell Boyd's terrific camera-work documents a country full of contradictions and possibilities. Equally good is the use of music, with Maurice Jarre's evocative ethnic percussion score, Kwan's love of Kiri Te Kanawa and a haunting sequence where a besotted Guy and Jill race home from a party to the strains of the Vangelis piece L'Infant, from his Opera Sauvage album. The film is something of an acquired taste I think - as a straight thriller it's not that exciting and it doesn't really have any big impressive set pieces. Where it scores for me is in atmosphere and mood; trying to recreate a place and a time and populate it with iconic characters - the idealistic writer, the glamorous woman, the enigmatic stranger. It may not be entirely successful but it's a unique and intriguing movie. Written by Christoper Koch, David Williamson and Weir, based on Koch's book.