Year Released: 1982
Directed by: Peter Weir
Starring: Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt
(PG, 115 min.)
Genre: Action and Adventure ,Drama, Romance
Academy Award: 1984
Best Supporting Actress: Linda Hunt

“I made you see things. I made you feel something about what you write. I created you.” –BIlly Kwan

An astonishingly young and vulnerable Mel Gibson careens between the influence of a mercurial photographer and his growing passion for a lovely British attaché in Jakarta, Indonesia. Festering poverty and violence envelop us, the heat palpitates like a hammering heartbeat, and ambition battles better angels.

Under the apt direction of Australia’s Peter Weir, we are totally immersed in this love affair set on the eve of an attempted coup of President Sukarno in 1965. Mel Gibson, playing Guy Hamilton, is without that swagger that he developed later on in his career; his face awash in love and longing one minute, and fierce and intense the next. It is like seeing a young colt in his first outing at the track before standing in the winner’s circle becomes a predictable outcome.

Or according to the brilliant Steve Schweighofer of Filmotomy:

Pre-Hollywood Mel Gibson was a most promising acting talent and criminally good-looking. It was this film that made Hollywood seduce Mel Gibson into the Hollywood machine, eventually turning him from innocent Adonis into a megastar, powerbroker and, eventually, tabloid fodder. –Steve Schweighofer

Sigourney Weaver, trained for the stage and fresh off the success of 1979’s Alien, is also more human here than that tough girl image she later cultivated in all the sequels to that big hit. The passion she only reluctantly yields to contributes to the heat of the film as well as the steamy physical atmosphere. And that reluctance, like Jimmy Stewart’s in It’s a Wonderful Life, the Ego battling the Id, shows the ultimate strength of that passion. After all, she is due to leave Jakarta in 2 weeks when she meets Gibson. Every rational bone in her body says no to this love affair, but who could resist the “criminally handsome” young Gibson, whose acting here is quite incredible? Both he and Sigourney Weaver communicate that passion with their eyes and facial expressions, their bodies inexorably drawn to each other.

But it is the photographer who arranges the meeting, Linda Hunt’s Billy Kwan, the American actress some may remember from 1985’s Silverado, or more recently from the television series NCIS Los Angeles, who steals the show. Billy’s raspy voice over narrative is not anything like the clichéd versions from some of those cheesy film noirs of the 40s. It is, in fact, the “moral compass” of the whole film.

And Billy being a dwarf is the coup de grace. It reminds us of the role of the court jester, often a dwarf, also. He has the ear of the king; he is given allowances other court pretenders are not. But if the jester is treated poorly by those he admires or serves, the consequences are grave, as Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates in his short story “Hop Frog.”

As the petted dwarf, Billy has contacts throughout Jakarta, and it is he who selects Gibson’s Guy Hamilton to have the exclusive opening to them, getting Guy exclusive interviews. They form a team, Billy taking him where the action is, and atop Guy’s shoulders, photographing it it as well.

“We'll make a great team, old man. You for the words, me for the pictures. I can be your eyes,” Billy tells him.

Billy is as complex and exotic as the city he calls home, and like Mel Gibson’s Guy, first time foreign correspondent from Australia, he is also an outsider of sorts. Not only a dwarf, but mixed race as well. He sees Billy as the innocent empty vessel into which he will pour his knowledge and wisdom. Here is a sampling of that wisdom:

· If it's in focus, it's pornography, if it's out of focus, it's art.

· Stalin had good Discipline. He killed 10 million.

· Why can't you give yourself? Why can't you learn to love?

· In the West, we want answers for everything. Everything is right or wrong, or good or bad. But in the East no such final conclusion exists.

· Look at Prince Ajuna. He's a hero. But he can also be fickle and selfish. Krishna says to him, "All is clouded by desire, Ajuna, as a fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust. Through these, it blinds the soul.

· Here, on the quiet page, I am the master.

· What then must we do? We must give with love to whoever God has placed in our path.

· Most of us become children again when we enter the slums of Asia. And last night I watched you walk back into childhood. With all its opposite intensities: laughter and misery, the crazy and the grim, toy town and a city of fear.

· Starvation is a great aphrodisiac.

· Don't think about the major issues. You do what you can about the misery in front of you. You add your light to the sum of all light.

The Year of Living Dangerously is the last purely Australian film directed by Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), and Gallipoli (1981) which first demonstrated Gibson’s acting chops. We may better remember Weir’s American hits, such as Witness (1985), Mosquito Coast (1986), Dead Poets Society (1989), The Truman Show (1998), Master and Commander (2003) and The Way Back (2010). Notice how many of those films also introduce the physical and emotional isolation we see in 1982’s The Year of Living Dangerously.

Different Drummer waited a while before deciding to review this relatively unknown film, but it stuck with me in a way I cannot describe. It has action, romance, and great philosophical underpinnings. Not to miss for discriminating viewers and those who aspire to be.

–Kathy Borich
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Trailer

Film-Loving Foodie

This picture says it all. Two people obviously enthralled with each other, enjoying drinks as exotic as their locale. So, of course, Different Drummer had to choose a recipe for the best exotic drink of Jakarta, and it turns out, one that has a special attachment to the history behind our film.

Bir Pletok, our cocktail choice for this film, originated from Jakarta, and people may be confused by its name, thinking that this beverage contains alcohol, since there is word ‘bir (beer)’ in its name. But in its native form this drink contains zero alcohol; it is made from ginger, lemongrass, cardamoms, cinnamon, sappan wood, and sugar—no alcohol at all.

However, the cocktail form of the drink was actually invented in 1962 at the suggestion of Bapak Sukarno, the first President of Indonesia, and actually the author of The Year of Living Dangerously, his memoir of the last year he had in office, and of course, the inspiration for the title of this film.

(At first Different Drummer was mislead, thinking that the film would center on a whole year in the life of its leading man, Mel Gibson’s Guy Hamilton. Instead it is a more deeply embedded allusion to Sukarno’s final year in office, with all its ensuing chaos.)

Here is the story of the invention of the cocktail:

Mamiek then took to the stage to share how the Bir Pletok was invented. The idea came from Bapak Soekarno – the first president of Indonesia – who visited Mamiek’s bar in 1962 and said, “The Asian Games is coming to Jakarta soon and there will be a lot of international guests, especially at this hotel. I need you to create a cocktail inspired by our country that will appeal to international tastes.” A few days later Mamiek returned with the Bir Pletok cocktail, explaining his choice to Soekarno: “I’m originally from Betawi, and our traditional drink is Pletok. I want to give it international recognition – but in cocktail form.”

Mamiek’s version is a blend of vodka, Cointreau, lime juice and sugar topped up with Anker beer. Traditionally, Pletok is a non-alcoholic drink made with ginger, lemongrass, sechang wood, clove, cardamom and pandan leaves, and it’s said the name Pletok is onomatopoeic – taken from the sound the drink makes when shaken with ice in bamboo tubes. But given the ingredients, and the fact that originally Pletok was created for non-drinking muslims, Moka admits the cocktail version is nothing like the traditional drink. “No one is really sure why Mamiek called it Pletok,” says Moka. “I guess he just wanted to pay homage to his hometown.” –Drink Magazine