User Reviews

I watched Babi Buta Yang Ingin Terbang last week in the Amsterdam Filmmuseum, and found it a somewhat unbalanced but still interesting movie. It is a real art-house movie, more in the style of (Chinese) directors Hou Hsiao Hsien and Tsai Ming-liang than a more mainstream product like (Javanese) Garin Nugroho's Daun di Atas Bantal, which is probably the internationally best known Indonesian movie of the last couple of years. Babi Buta has many long shots and the connection between the various scenes is not always clear.

This fits nicely with the search for identity, the theme of the movie. Man is not busy with his identity 24 hours a day, so it can be presented in a fragmented (or as the director stated "kaleidoscopic") way in a movie. The people portrayed in the movie are mainly ethnic Indonesians of Chinese descent. Quite a few books have been written about the position of Indonesia's ethnic Chinese, a minority that has been relatively successful economically, but also stands somewhat aside from mainstream society. Former President Soeharto used Chinese businessmen as business partners for his ever more corrupt government, which did not reflect nicely on other Chinese. Soeharto also repressed Chinese culture in the aftermath of the chaos at the end of Soekarno's regime, when Chinese were suspected of being godless communists who collaborated with the People's Republic of China.

The Chinese in this movie are not extremely successful. They live in a rather gritty area near the centre of Surabaya, and interact with the people of Malay stock surrounding them. This is sometimes tough and sometimes an opportunity (e.g. when one of the character announces to convert to Islam, so he can marry more women).

Not all parts of the movie were equally clear to me. I missed the fact that the young girl's friend was a Menadonese instead of a Chinese (and who is beaten up for "being Chinese") completely. Equally, the reason for the blind dentist to get sodomised was beyond me (and the scene caused about 30 % of the viewers to leave the theatre). If you read the director's description on his website or the synopsis here on IMDb beforehand, a lot of the scenes do make more sense, but I feel that a movie should speak for itself.

The link with Chinese culture is limited to firecrackers. The Christian televangelists are also quite popular among a certain segment of Indonesian Chinese society. Basically these people's lives are presented as they are, there is very little true analysis of causes or ideas for solutions.

So indeed you get a kaleidoscopic view of a certain segment of ethnic Chinese people in Indonesia. The camera work is excellent. The movie has a raw sense of humour, as you can find among younger Indonesians. The actors were a bit flat-charactered sometimes, but others were okay. Nowhere however did the movie reach the subtlety of a Hou Hsiao Hsien's movie.

Let me start by saying that my one star is a provocation rather than giving true credit to the effort of this Tiger Award contender. Yesterday I witnessed a screening of this film at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam. During QA I got uneasy with how the film was discussed. Although it is promising that finally an Indonesian Chinese film maker addresses this subject I am rather disappointed for the angle taken. The film has taken the Chinese point of view as a victim, a pig and not just a pig but blind one. I am afraid to have to agree fully that this pig is blind. The film takes a social political standpoint but does not really gives the proper arguments for this standpoint. It gets stuck to racial clichés.

Last year I saw the movie Sepet from the Malaysian filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad during the Malaysian Film Festival in Amsterdam. This film takes a far more mature and holistic standpoint. During the yesterday QA the QA leader comments that the situation in Indonesia is unique. Well it is not. It is happening all over Asia. In South East Asia each country deals with the problem differently. The word culture is mentioned many times during the debate yesterday but in The Pig this aspect is shown shallowly, while in Sepet one of the strongest scenes is actually when the Chinese protagonist ( who looks very Chinese and off course still speaks and reads Chinese ) dances a Malaysian joget in front of his Chinese friends. In Malaysia the Chinese, Tamils and indigenous Malaysian are far less integrated than in Indonesia. Four languages prevail in Malaysia.

I am so bored with the 'we had to change our names' wail. Well, my name is still Oei ( wrongly subtitled in The Pig as Wie ), and I would prefer to wear the name Widjaja as Oei sounds funny in Holland. The whole name change controversy is far more nicely treated in the Thai novel 'Letters from Thailand' by Botan ( Supa Lui Syry ) where Chinese children actually begged their parents to change their name into Sanskrit because it sounds so much nicer. The book is a classic on the Chinese minority issue and a must read for everyone interested in the subject. As a matter of fact Chinese do serve in the army in Thailand and are admitted in the army. Who wants to be in the army anyway? So there are no Indonesian Chinese prostitutes. Is that normal? Why are first generations Indonesians Chinese in Holland all doctors? Is that normal? All Dutch top badminton players are Chinese (imports) is that normal? Truth is nobody cares. In Suriname at some point people had to change their names too. Now there are names like Mike Ho Sam Sooi , a full Chinese name converted into a last name worn by a black man.

There are many Chinese Indonesians in Holland. I am one of them. Another one is Giam Kwee she is married with a Dutch actor. She does not manifest her self as Chinese Indonesian. No, the Chinese Indonesians in Holland have ethnically disappeared ( just like the Chinese in Thailand more or less - well they don't disappear one became prime minister (Chuan Leek Pai)). Now Chinese male migrants came over China to the Indonesian archipelago more than three hundred years ago. Why have Chinese Indonesians not disappeared in Indonesia? The irony game with the Stevie Wonder song is good. But it backfires. The director said that Indonesians like to sing the American Dream - as represented by the Wonder song - but cannot or don't live it. Well, if that is the analogy, African Americans are proud to be Americans but they do manifest themselves culturally and politically as African Americans. If the Indonesian Chinese have the same ambition then I am waiting for the Indonesian Chinese equivalent of Mr. Stevie Wonder, Martin Luther King, Spike Lee, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama.

The first sequence sums it up. At the end of the INA : CHN badminton rally there is no way to tell who is Indonesia who is China. But it gets worse. Even for me who has some affinity with Indonesia a lot of subtleties are lost when I watched the movie. I had to read from the description of the film in this database that the young boy is supposed to be a Menadonese. I thought he was Chinese. So I lost the whole clue. I think the gay threesome is lost to Western audience because it was far from easy to discern which of the guys was supposed to be pri which non- pri (Chinese). Personnaly I had also trouble differentiating the young women. I got confused with the supposed spouse of Halim, because she is so young (sometimes I took her as the daughter). The editing didn't help. It is commented as being highly original, but to me it is highly confusing and I have a feeling that it camouflages the lack of funding or even lack of ideas. Shots have been reused. Empty set shots have been added at the end of the film as if the sets are the main characters we have to part with. Well I hardly got to know the human characters. What have we really learned from them?

If the Chinese Indonesians really care about their identity than this film should have been the manifestation of this concern. Then this film should have been funded by the Chinese Indonesian community in Indonesia who - as justly reasserted during QA (but NOT in the film!) - holds the major part of the Indonesian nation's fortune. I invite the IFFR and Hubert Bals fund to challenge Indonesian Chinese filmmakers to picture the Indonesian Chinese CULTURE on film. If they don't see that this is the real problem then yes we are all pigs and we are all blind and we will never fly.