There are few modern directors I admire as much as Peter Weir. His movies have a lean, elegant quality; he knows restraint and the power of understatement. His use of music is masterful. He is a fantastic actors' director, getting from people like Harrison Ford and Jim Carrey the best performances of their careers - here it's Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver. Even potential miscalculations - like giving the part of an Indonesian man to an American actress, as it happens with Linda Hunt in this film - strike gold: Hunt won a deserved Academy Award for the role.
Even a minor Weir, like The Year of Living Dangerously, captures the sense of alienation - and exhilaration - of outsiders lost in mysterious places, a recurrent theme in the director's opus (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Master and Commander). Here it's Indonesia during the Sixties, as Gibson's foreign correspondent follows the attempted coup to overthrow President Sukarno.
Worth watching, like every movie in Weir's filmography.
7/10
Even a minor Weir, like The Year of Living Dangerously, captures the sense of alienation - and exhilaration - of outsiders lost in mysterious places, a recurrent theme in the director's opus (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Master and Commander). Here it's Indonesia during the Sixties, as Gibson's foreign correspondent follows the attempted coup to overthrow President Sukarno.
Worth watching, like every movie in Weir's filmography.
7/10