The Year of Living Dangerously

The Year of Living Dangerously_360P

source: The Year of Living Dangerously

Ever since I first saw this film, it has been one of my favorite. The performances are not perfect, but the chemistry between the main characters is electric. The semi-fictitious plot (it is said to be somewhat based on a period of the life of reporter Peter Arnet) melds so nicely with the historical events of 1960's Indonesia. Linda Hunt well deserved the Academy Award, but I felt that it should have also been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Director, Film, and Cinematography. The story follows the novel of which it was based better than 95% of the time. The Atmosphere of the film always leaves me awe-struck. By the end I feel like I have lived Guy's life. It is a romantic film with a small dose of action that both men and women should enjoy.

Peter Weir's film of C.J. Koch's novel, co-adapted by Weir, David Williamson, and Koch, is full of a fake-politics, fake-intrigue, fake-romance, fake-everything. It jangles and stutters along, riding on the personalities involved, but never gives us a clear picture of the action at hand. Rookie Australian journalist Mel Gibson is sent to Indonesia in 1965 to cover the strife boiling over in Djakarta under President Sukarno's government; he's befriended by a half-Chinese male dwarf (impeccably played by Oscar-winner Linda Hunt), and gets inside information from him as well as from a beautiful, flirtatious assistant from the British Embassy. Weir seems to realize the brilliant casting move which puts intensely-hushed Hunt in the center of the drama (as the narrator and human conscience of the story), yet he makes the same mistake Robert Wise made with Julie Harris in "The Haunting" and Carol Reed made with Jack Wild in "Oliver!": too much of Hunt robs the character of mystery--and, as a result, the film as a whole. The editor constantly reverts back to Hunt for reaction shots and reprimands, until it seems as if Billy Kwan is some sort of visiting royalty. The squalor of Indonesia is capably reproduced on locations in the Philippines and Australia, and yet Weir never examines the locals with anything but a passing eye. His heart lies in the romance which develops between admittedly-sexy Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, although neither star projects much personality here. ** from ****

I am a retired journalist. I can remember how journalism was practiced at the time of the movie. That is done well in the film. So are the jaundiced characters who practice the profession. Since I've never been in Indonesia, I cannot comment on the realism of the Philippine locations. But I've seen a lot of movies, and this one is not a good one. I heard not one Strine (Australian) accent in the movie, certainly not from Mel Gibson. The Brits in it, including that asshole colonel, all sound as if they were brought up in Manhattan. And Peter Weir, an Australian, certainly must have known that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation did not have an ABS competitor. Finally, as we see the Royal Netherlands airliner that is the focus of the last scene, we see it inscribed as "Royal Netherlands Airlines." Bullshit! I've flown on KLM and have seen KLM planes. They do not say "Royal Netherlands Airlines." In short, what the previous paragraph is saying is that there is so little realism in this film that one is hard-pressed to accept any of it as historical fiction. And one never gets the sense that the CIA-backed Suharto would prove to be one of history's great mass murderers, nor that Soekarno was considered one of the great forces for good in the world along with such other lovely people as Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mao Tse-tung (as we still spelled it then), and Josip Broz Tito. Their Bandung Conference was considered a step forward, toward the raising of the Third World to its supposedly deserved place in the scheme of things. Finally, I could not understand the love story between Weaver and Gibson. Maybe it was just animal magnetism, but there was nothing in it that was convincing.

Worst casting since Pacino played a Cuban yelling "Fush yu mang!" every few minutes. No one Asian, or who has ever lived in Asia, or even has ever been around any Asians besides in restaurants or resorts, would find Hunt believable as Indonesian. Not the face, eyes, skin tone. Not the veddy British accent either. It's like asking us to believe Peter Sellers as Charlie Chan...wait, Hollywood actually did that. OK, Sellers as Fu Manchu...oh, that happened also? OK, Peter Ustinov as Chan. Oh, Hollywood did that too. Thank God it was only in the past...wait, there was a film with blond blue eyed Emma Stone as Chinese and Hawaiian? In 2015? What made Hollywood so delusional as to like this performance, even giving it an award? Probably because of the White Savior message of the film, which Hollywood just loves. Her winning an Oscar was one of the worst choices in Oscar history, as bad as Traffic winning best film, and for the same White Savior reasons. It's just as huge a mark against the film in that this story allegedly about the mass killings of over half a million Indonesians focuses on two pretty dull white people having an affair. That's like making a Holocaust filmmwhere you spend half the film on two gentiles fooling around. Still, the film does have its moments. The Indonesian actors, scenes, and story hold your interest. But that's less than half the film. ETA: I'm glad of the strong reactions to my review, both the downvotes and the higher than I expected number of up votes. Good to know some others feel the same.

THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY is an Australian film shot by Peter Weir that looks at a military coup in Indonesia in the 1960s. The story is told through the eyes of Aussie reporter Mel Gibson, in one of his early fresh-faced star-making turns, and is one in a slew of similarly violent journalist abroad-based true stories made during the era (THE KILLING FIELDS perhaps being the best of these). It's an engaging story for sure, but I found the film a little lacklustre. Too much of it seems to focus on a romance with the fine Sigourney Weaver, and there isn't much political context. In fact, I found that the film only really gets going in the last 40 minutes or so and until that point the pace flags. Towards the end, however, we get some excellent plot twists and some very hard-hitting material, and it's very good indeed; a shame that the rest of the movie didn't follow suit. My enjoyment of the tale was also spoilt by the presence of Linda Hunt playing a young Chinese guy in the ultimate Hollywood example of 'yellow face' make up. Hunt is never convincing and a complete distraction, especially when you hear her soft feminine vocals coming out of this supposed guy's mouth. The Spock ears don't help much either. I was astonished to read that she won an Oscar for this caricature performance, which to my mind is no better than that of Peter Sellers in MURDER BY DEATH.

This really is an intensely irritating film. You're supposed to relate to the narrator of much of the film, a jug eared dwarf cameraman who is about as irritating as any character in film I've seen. You were actually hoping somebody would shoot him, such was his determination to be a do gooder. God he was annoying. Mel Gibson was fairly average as the Australian reporter in Indonesia in the 60s, and despite the tiringly contrived love interest of Sigourney Weaver, this was predictable and dull from start to finish. As far as historical exposes go, this is utterly pants.

I don't have much to say about this movie. It was just boring. I was confused about Linda Hunt playing a guy. She was obviously a woman. So you're sitting through the movie thinking: why is this woman playing a man? It starts to madden you until that's all you can think of. I remember thinking that this was going to be some great action flick from the exciting trailer they showed on TV. They must have known what a klinker they had if they tried to sell this as an action movie. It was a plodding toothache of a film. Anyway,I got tired of this movie and walked out. It wasn't one of the worst movies ever but it was in the bottom 10 percent. Zzzzzzzz.....

Peter Weir's movie, set in Sukarno's Indonesia in 1965, can be seen as four films in one. The first is socio-political, focusing on the plight of the impoverished Indonesian people, the impending insurrection by the communist movement, and the bloody, chaotic aftermath of the coup. The second, coloured in Graham Greene-ish tones, has a cast of western journalists and diplomats failing to make sense of what's happening around them, and falling back on sex, drink and cynicism. The third - and most important in commercial-cinema terms - is a convincingly acted romance between rookie foreign correspondent Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) and British diplomat Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), culminating in an unlikely and sentimental ending to the film. But it is the fourth of these "sub-movies" which is the most intriguing; this concerns the diminutive and enigmatic Australian/Chinese photographer Billy Kwan, an astonishing - and Oscar winning - portrayal by actress Linda Hunt. Billy sees himself as a puppet-master, pulling the strings of friends and colleagues, particularly of Jill and Guy, whom he throws together. But his need to take control also motivates him to help local people, not through indirect and political means, but directly like an early Christian, and this apparently benign course leads to tragedy. Billy is the true heart and conscience of this film. Weir is not entirely successful in weaving these strands together, and leaves a few gaps in both plot and characterisation. He is also occasionally guilty of melodrama (a fault which, in the movie, Jill warns Guy about), especially in the film's closing scenes - though certainly not where he shows communist sympathisers being shot, which is factual. On the whole, however, the movie works on both commercial and artistic levels, and should be seen.