The 2009 Jakarta International Film Festival (Jiffest) is adorned with Indonesia Feature Film Competition (IFFC) that proved the quality of our national films in the international level. Films screened in IFFC are selected based on theme, narration, as well as artistic style. This competition was first held in 2006 and this year is its fourth run. In 2009 IFFC, competing films line-up consist of fifteen Indonesian films, i.e. 3 Doa 3 Cinta (3 Wishes 3 Loves, directed by Nurman Hakim), Babi Buta Yang Ingin Terbang (The Blind Pig Who Wants To Fly, Edwin), Bukan Cinta Biasa (Not An Ordinary Love, Benni Setiawan), Cin(t)a (God is a Director) (Sammaria Simanjuntak), Garuda di Dadaku (Garuda in My Heart, Ifa Isfansyah), Get Married 2 (Hanung Bramantyo), Identitas (Identity, Aria Kusumadewa), Jermal (Ravi Bharwani, Rayya Makarim, Utawa Tresno), Kado Hari Jadi (The Anniversary Gift, Paul Agusta), Keramat (Sacred, Monty Tiwa), King (Ari Sihasale), Merantau (Merantau Warrior, Gareth Evans), Pintu Terlarang (The Forbidden Door, Joko Anwar), Romeo Juliet (Andibachtiar Yusuf), and Under The Tree (Garin Nugroho). Among the 15 competing films, Nurman Hakim’s 3 Doa 3 Cinta came out as a winner.

As mentioned in IFFC introductory note, curatorial process is carried by www.rumahfilm.org. According to their observation, there are two most noticeable phenomena in Indonesian film industry this year. Indonesian film industry is as if a turning wheel. By analogy, it elaborates on how Indonesian film industry is now more structurally settled than ever, where—seen from theme and characterization perspective—it becomes repetitive while at the same time gaining a stronger product diversification. This year, Indonesian films focus on massive, instant production. There are also some films that tried to revive a dormant genre, of course the one adaptable with contemporary theme and aesthetics. The said IFFC introductory note cites some fresh names. The emergence of these novel players is not without reason. As mentioned above, the settled structure of Indonesian film industry opens up as a fruitful business opportunity and added to it, the eagerness of these new players to show their creative idea to public. Undoubtedly, popular approach becomes their main area of showcase in hope to gain the widest possible audience which leads to a tempting bigger profit.

In the same introductory note is mentioned that not all Indonesian films produced this year are slaves to the statistics of audience size. Some has noticeably used distinct artistic approach without having to sell their souls to market demand. It shows how Indonesian film industry, during the year, does not depend solely to the number of its audience. IFFC curatorial noted the tendencies in the landscape of Indonesian film industry—dubbed as a turning wheel in determining its filmmaking formula—the strong product diversification, and also the film line-up for the competition, have attributively and artistically fulfill international standard.

Under The Tree is one of the fifteen competing films in 2009 Jiffest IFFC. Eventhough it did not win the Best Feature Film, this work of Garin Nugroho was first screened in 2008 Tokyo International Film Festival, in a section named The Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix, and also in several other international film festival including the 52^nd London BFI. In its home country, the film was firstly released in 2008 Jiffest gala premier. In the 2008 Indonesian Film Festival (FFI) held in Bandung, the film was nominated. In this year’s Jiffest, Under The Tree is selected to compete in IFFC. The decision to line up Under The Tree is understandably due to the abovedescribed tendencies of Indonesian film industry. Under The Tree was an exception to common occurrences in Indonesian film industry and that is precisely what Garin as a director has to offer. Garin—in delivering artistic approach in his films—is widely known to offer such discourse, including this time through Under The Tree, his tenth film during his lifetime as a director.

In this article, I’d like to perceive Garin’s film from its grand narrative, especially its artistic approach. Something tickles me to state that the film tries to present social and cultural problems in a poetic film language, just as he did in his previous works. Still, in this latest film of his, a big question remains. In this film, Garin has pretensions of rejection to quasi-modernity.

His rejection is explicitly shown from the way he translate his visions into random and fragmented scenes, through genuine symbols of locality and gives the audience a room of self-interpretation. His inserts this rejection to quasi-modernity in every shot, scene, cinematographic arrangement, and construction of montage. According to Ikranegara, one of the actors, Under The Tree is obsessed to liberate itself from modernistic frames. In narrative as well as stylistics, Under The Tree rejects that modernistic pattern of rhythmic unity. Garin, according to Ikranegara, is a postmodern individual because he allows the audience to self-interpret his films, as much as his construction of the film’s narrative and postmodern stylistics, with its random pattern and thickly poetic language.

Garin chooses Balinese tradition as a representation to his artistic approach by intertwining social problem with Balinese religious tradition. In his comments, Garin uttered his attempt to deliver his restlessness upon observing the ever-growing social and communal crisis. Through this film, he wanted to articulate this concern by putting forward core issues that occur in the current world such as child trafficking, environmental damage, morality, alienation and existential conflict undergone by most people. In the film, these tragic stories are made intersecting at random points of one background setting, i.e. Bali. Bali is chosen as a symbol of aggravation between modernity and locality, the pull between individuality and communality. Bali is also an escapade to most Jakartans. This escapism is what Garin manifested in one of the character, Maharani (Marcella Zalianty), who runs away from her stepmother, and in another character, Nian (Nadia Saphira), a famous actress from the capital city who flees from her father’s corruption scandal. The characters in the film are all tragic bearers of their inner conflicts. Garin tries to overlay these modern diseases—alienation, loss, powerlessness, identity crisis, and injustice—through this film.

Instead of portraying Bali as a tourist destination, Under The Tree offers the other side of exoticism of Bali. The true reality of Bali is tragically described as a consequence of the social crisis that spread across the island post Indonesian Communist Party banishment. Bali rapidly develops as a holiday destination and tourism icon of Indonesia. Its religious and cultural embodiments enmeshed as the island’s distinct trait, where it has charmed anyone who goes there. With its rich cultural and natural predispositions, Bali has sped in the last 30 years as a center of art and cultural activities, giving birth to the many creative artworks in multi-sectors. This is one of the things that brought Maharani and Nian to come visit the island for a cathartic escape.

A production of Karya SET Film Company and Credo Cine Arts Company, the film tells the story of three women, each with their own conflicts. Meet Maharani, Nian and Dewi (Ayu Laksmi). Maharani, running away from her stepmother, departs for Bali with a lump of hatred and tries to regain self-worth. With hatred down her throat, she rejects the idea of becoming a mother. But situation has put her in a corner. The place where she stays turns out to be a house of child trafficking syndicate. She is shocked upon witnessing pregnant ladies only to have their children traded. Springs to her mind, how wasted the role of a mother could be. This incident has deepened her hatred for mother figures and led her to reject the very idea of her becoming a mother.

Nian, with all her Jakarta-bearing attitude, comes to Bali to free herself from the problems she’s facing. She feels her life is hollow and empty. She’s losing grip. The absence of a father figure devastates her, as portrayed in a scene where she watches television news airing her father’s corruption case. Her father is accused of mega-trillion-rupiah corruption case by the Commission for Corruption Eradication. All the comfort and wealth has turned her life meaningless. She then escapes to Bali to somehow find a sense of fulfillment and eventually channels her yearning for a father figure when she encounters Darma (Ikranegara), an artist who is considered as the living dead by society, on his way to sacrifice himself in a mystical ritual of Calonarang. This religious procession, filled with symbolic dances, would deliver him to his grave. As an expression of eschatological performance art, Calonarang implies a Balinese socio-ethical message toward life’s complexities. In the film, the procession is conceived as one’s concern to environmental problem.

Nian and Darma’s encounter is one of the film’s distinct colors, because the first time Nian lays her eyes on the sight of Darma, she finds him an odd character. She secretly observes his activities in a temple at a beach, where he would pick fallen frangipani flowers everyday and often rest under the shade of the tree. Darma—an elderly who just recently returns to his homeland, after disappearing during 1965 over the accusation of being a communist—is then approached by Nian. Conversation takes place between them, one of different generations. Darma—a background of political trauma revolves around his being—conveys to Nian his concerns over nationalism issues and the importance to appreciate history. But Nian—a product of pragmatism and bourgeoisie—turns dumbfounded, clueless of all the things he talked about.

Within this framing, Garin clearly positions himself as a director in addressing a problem of a nation with rotten and weakened joints, by staging Nian as the signification of today’s reality. In Garin’s terms, Nian is a typical techno-capitalized Indonesian, relying herself to an artificial apathy as a generation born out of New Order de-politization and the transition era to reformation. In the scene, Garin’s political statement manifested through his depictions of child trafficking issues, female reproduction, commercialized culture, environment, and Garin’s subversion of Bali seen from a different angle vis-à-vis it being the flawless tourist destination.

A different course takes on Dewi’s story, a radio announcer. She is undergoing an intricate inner conflict as a mother. Her options are all grave; she has to either abort her pregnancy due to underdevelopment of the fetus’ brain or to deliver her baby knowing that its life will be short-lived. This existential turmoil is carved on her expression, this lady who loves to sing Balinese traditional chants. Her inability to swallow this bitter pill is compressed in a scene where she slices coconut flesh grudgingly and, all of a sudden, repeatedly hits her own belly. Upon checking her pregnancy to Dr Bulantrisna, Dewi is advised to accept her baby’s fatal condition eventhough it will not live for a long time. During the checkup, Dewi and Dr Bulantrisna sing songs together. One of the them is Marilah Kemari (Come on Over), a song by Titiek Puspa. This song reminds us to the era of President Soekarno. This scene also symbolizes a strong nationalism sense as it sprang to Dewi a hopeful conversation when Dr Bulantrisna presents to Dewi pictures of her younger self, when she was a dancer and often summoned to perform in the presidential palace and also to perform before the Japanase emperor. Dr Bulantrisna proudly shows Dewi the pictures to give her hope to the baby in her womb. The meaning of becoming a mother—this world of reincarnation that Dewi loses faith in—reach to a closure with the presence of Dr Bulantrisna who manifests as a gynecologist and at the same time a mother figure to Dewi.

The film is also starred by some Balinese art maestros. Among them are I Ketut Rina who casts as Dr Bulantrisna Djelantik, Aryani Kriegenburg Willems as Soka—a woman cornered in a ill-fated situation—also theater actors, Ikranegara as Darma, and Dwi Sasono as Mayun Mahendra, a young man with pangs of guilt over his mother.

Garin’s obsession to renounce modern monism in his film does not quite pierce. Instead of allowing self-interpretation with its nonlinear plot thus rejecting a typical Hollywood narrative structure, Under The Tree fails to embrace a postmodern framework. It hasn’t totally delivered a style of film language that adopts eclecticism, a postmodern entity with oppositional tendencies to other styles or codes merged in one space. Its aesthetical achievement is transmissioned with full renunciation to the uniform, univocal, and symbolic dogma of modernity that Garin deliberately translate it in every scene, making the logic of the film’s montage turns contra-productive. Through this film, Garin has failed to deliver it as postmodern collage. Juxtaposition in his montages does not completely fit principles of discontinuity. Can he truly embrace postmodern vision when he takes scenes of Calonarang procession with a Hollywood technique where camera is rolling supported by a Jimmy Jeep? His postmodern vision is an ambiguity in itself and Garin falls to the inconsistency trap of film language that he boasts as a non-mainstream one. Does it guarantee, as Ikranegara stated, that in the making of the film, acting and improvisation capability are priority, in scene-taking as well as in the montage construction? Garin, bearing a predicate as an internationally acclaimed director, seems entrapped within the frameworks of modernity. How is he not to, if the exclusivity of Balinese performance art in Calonarang and the rhythm of dancers are portrayed exotically? A term of binary opposition appears to dominate its shots and montage, the so-called unity of this collage unit. In the film, Bali is still seen through a Western eye looking East; with all its magic, exoticism, and conservability as tourism commodity.

In the film, the independency of film language is blocked by the domination of decorative element of performance art. Its magical realism—forced to compromise within the film’s framing—slips to a cinematic, procedural mistake. Its documentary approach becomes vapid upon taking the scene of Calonarang procession without even showing a construction of documentary stylistic. This is where Garin fails, once more, to actualize a spontaneous scene during the take of the procession.

During her trail to the corners of the Island of the Gods, Maharani suddenly bumps to a crowd about to self-sentence a young woman who got caught stealing a pack of milk. Without much hesitation, Maharani saves the pregnant lady. She opens the door of the cab she’s currently riding to let the woman in. Inside the cab, Maharani is petrified yet again to see the woman starting to moan in pain. She eventually has her baby delivery in the cab. The experience shook Maharani greatly, to encounter such a heartbreaking sight. She feels overwhelmed to witness this situation still with a lump of hatred to her own mother. All occurrences that entail seem to corner her further and further: she stays in a village of dancers who are about to perform a story of the mother of Mahabarata characters, encounters child trafficking practices, meets with a young man of guilt towards his mother, and saves a pregnant young woman red-handed stealing milk. All experiences seem to whisper the tale of mothers with all its intricacies.

The film is ended with a cross-cutting montage of the women Maharani saved who gave birth in the cab to Dewi—also just gave birth—holding her baby in the hospital. The stories of three women in Bali in dealing with death, birth and the true meaning of being a mother are finalized with Maharani’s compassion to help a young mother who steals milk for her future baby, and also with Dewi’s bliss upon finally holding her baby in her arms. These mosaic journeys in Bali—full of magic realism and unpredictability of each character’s trail—end as the audience would expect. Hence, Garin eventually stays in the lane of modern monism that he intentionally renounces.

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."