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The Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir) 1983
Eventual ho-hum isolationism
aside, there’s plenty to like here. Certainly the film is adept at evoking the
feel of a poverty stricken nation, and it’s to Weir’s credit that he rarely
stoops to easy sentimentalism. The scenes that follow our foreign correspondents
as they smash through roadblocks and plunge into the rioting masses are
sufficiently rebellious and exciting to make the title feel apt, even if the
only supposedly interesting love story that’s there as a subplot seems to do
the opposite. One can’t exactly blame the actors, who are pretty enough, for
the lack of real sparks though, because the script doesn’t develop them into
people with satisfying motivating concerns (mostly they seem horny). Weir’s
direction of them isn’t really at fault, either. He pulls the good stuff from
his actors without ever amping things up too wildly. If the film lacks the
poetic attention to and transcendence from the physical world that Weir’s best
work contains, that’s okay too, because the mood here is more about experience
than reflection. Complexities are apparently as rare in Indonesia as they are in
most of Hollywood. Nonetheless, The Year
of Living Dangerously is a rousing and sharp look at a land that’s far
from our own in more ways than one. * * * 01-09-02 Jeremy Heilman
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Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously starts out as a remarkably good film.
It’s a mildly romantic, highly intelligent look at the political upheaval in
1960’s Indonesia filtered through the eyes of two journalists. The film starts
out being narrated by Billy Kwan (played by Linda Hunt in a stupendously
successful bit of gender-blind casting), and his character has a clear point of
view with a mixture of optimistic humanity and grounded reality that’s perfect
as an audience surrogate. The observations that are made through his eyes often
tell us far more about the other characters than they do themselves. Billy is
absolutely sympathetic toward the plight of the citizens of this Third World
country, and that makes his belief in the regime and the obligation of the press
to tell the truth compelling. It’s unfortunate, then, that his character exits
the film with about an hour left, leaving the role of sympathetic character to
be carried by Mel Gibson’s callow and shallow young pup, Guy. Without Billy to
explain to him the significance of things, Guy turns the movie into a more
typical and xenophobic exercise that confirms for foreign audiences that all of
their worst fears about a place like Jakarta are indeed true. This lapse
certainly doesn’t sink the picture entirely, but it does little to build upon
the refreshing viewpoint found in the film’s first half.