Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Review of "The Year of Living Dangerously" (1982), Peter Weir

Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver at the very top of their game. A talented director just coming from down under to Hollywood.  And an era that still allowed for originality and non-caclulated risks.  The cast is completed with Linda Hunt, acting as a man, in the kind of character that is bound the appear in all clips about diversity in the film industry.

"The Year..." is about journalists and other high-level ex-pats in Sukarno`s Indonesia, troubled times, when Muslim generals and communist revolutionaries expect to swing the powerful leader to their cause, or die trying.  It has been copied various times to this day, from the superficial part of the plot (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, 2016) to specific suspenseful scenes (Argo, getting the passport stamped in the airport).  "The Year..." has a very good sense of place and time, and a nostalgic feel of impossibility as seen from the contemporary connected reality.  We can`t go back home, but we yearn for it. We do it every time we try to travel to exotic locations, to no avail: the result is an Instagram stream as rare as a Starbucks franchise in the United States.

It is rare to watch characters as those in the film nowadays.  Some of them act without further intentions of personal profit, just from their sense of decency and what it should be.  Moral "beings of Light" and profiteers of decadence fight in embassy soirees and hotel parties.  With the power of insight we already know that darkness won the battle.  However "The Year..." offers hope.  Not in a teen dystopic fantasy, not with comic book super-heroes, but with real pulsating human beings.

Are you kidding me? Yes, Watch it, with a drink and smokes (****)

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