Not a household name to the general public, but a regular fixture in major international festivals, Garin Nugroho is an important voice in Indonesia. Born to a family of artists (his father is a writer, publisher and stage director, and his brother’s works have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale), Nugroho, who studied both law and film, imagined cinema for a long time through history books, since foreign films were banned under Suharto’s dictatorship. Initially an attorney-turned-film critic who then directed ads, music videos and documentaries before becoming a filmmaker and a professor, Nugroho is as much a politically involved citizen as he is a learned scholar, and, as an artist, is extremely aware of society’s barriers and the creativity of others.
Opera Jawa, his second to last film to date, received financing from Austria, since – along with Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century, Ming-liang Tsai’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Daratt – it was one of seven films commissioned for the New Crowned Hope Project to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, presided over by Peter Sellars. The high-quality programming was an excellent showcase for Nugroho’s talent: Opera Jawa is an astonishing film, which combines contemporary and traditional arts, the founding myths of Asia and its political, ecological, social and economic realities of today. The point of departure for the film is the Ramayana, an Indian book whose influence has spread throughout the whole of Southeast Asia and which recounts in episodic form the abduction of Sita by a demon, and her being won back by her husband, the prince Rama. Nugroho has changed the names, Sita and Rama have become potters and the demon is transformed into a powerful butcher who ravishes his victim by seducing her through predatory dances and extravagant conduct. Into this conflict between marriage and desire can be read a statement on contemporary life, with a struggle between fundamentalist religions; and humankind’s victimization by Nature’s contempt may be seen as an echo to the tsunami that shook the region down to its cultural foundations. Nugroho does not shy away from accumulating possible interpretations, which for him are the wealth of the fable’s simplicity.
Although at first sight the viewer may feel he or she has been plunged into a totally unknown and foreign universe, Opera Jawa is still a resolutely contemporary film. The director’s mixture of oral, physical, dramatic and musical expression, his synthesis of multiple art forms, and the equivalent importance he gives to legend and reality, with references to local traditions and world culture, may be profoundly confusing. However, once moviegoers get past this disoriented feeling, they can re-open their eyes to a totally new world, where particles from ancient times mingle in a disconcerting yet euphoric atmosphere.
Bastien Hader