Word: sukarno
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After more than three centuries of Dutch colonial rule, Indonesia declared its independence in 1945. For the next 20 years, the nation was governed by its first President, the mercurial, left-leaning Sukarno. After a bloody, abortive Communist coup in 1965, Sukarno's power waned, and he was eased out of office two years later by Suharto, an army general. The conservative, strongly anti-Communist Suharto earned a reputation as "the father of development," resurrecting a faltering economy with the aid of the 1970s oil boom. The son of a farmer, Suharto helped increase agricultural production, finally enabling the nation...
...Living Dangerously is more than just a pictorial guidebook to Asia. Despite its Apocalypse-like teetering on the absurd. Weir's film packs an allure beyond its surface appeal--a seamy romance and political intrigue set to the backdrop of Sukarno's raging Indonesia of the 1960s...
...going is tough for Western journalists in Jakarta. Doors are shut to all but the craftiest, and Sukarno has whipped up anti-West feeling to a fever-pitch among the masses. But Hamilton catches the eye of the most fascinating character of the movie. Billy Kwan, a diminutive Eurasian photographer who seems to be the most well-connected person in town. Kwan, played by a woman, Linda Hunt, takes a liking to Hamilton and gets him a prized interview with the leader of the Indonesian communists who are about to launch their doomed coup of 1965. An unlikely team...
...film, not explicitly but as the backdrop to the parade of violent--but apparently unconnected--images that flash before our eyes. Is it by government or men that human misery will be cured? As the film ends, it seems that even the most masterful of politicians, a man like Sukarno, is a failure. Weir has no particular ideological axe to grind, but seems to be implying--and one can never be sure about this irritatingly obtuse work--that governments are impotent in the face of the most elemental, human problems. It doesn't make for much Hollywood excitement...
...more daring. He has taken MGM/UA's largesse to mount a more elaborate version of the theme that solders his five earlier films: the collision between British culture and anarchic nature, a conflict that virtually defines the Australian experience. The scene is Indonesia in 1965, as the Sukarno government stumbles toward a coup that will eventually end the strongman's reign. In the streets, Communist marchers sing revolutionary songs with Whiffenpoof harmonies; in the white man's clubs, journalists and diplomats slug back their Scotch and try to forget that the good imperial days have vanished into...