A young man rides in a bajaj with his pregnant lover, passing through Jakarta’s slums in the 1970s. Child beggars in the city’s labyrinths become a syntagmatic connection to bajaj. The young man is a university student named Sony (W. S. Rendra)¹ . His lover is also a university student, named Titiek (Yati Octavia). The young man’s views are as if emphasizing the discourses in humanity which can be attained only by entering university education. A middle class views with all its forged discourses.

The bajaj scene continues. Notions along ride home are filled with parental conservatism upon traditional values. Doctor’s verdict on the pregnancy serves as a climax, signifying the freedom at stake. At the same time, the couple is fighting for justice in the oligarchic capitalism surroundings. This is montage in practice, an aesthetic attempt in the film Yang Muda yang Bercinta (The Young and In-Love), directed by Sumanjaya (1977). The film narrates a wide gap of social disparity. These disparities are feudalism and freedom, poverty and wealth, individualism and tradition.

Indonesia’s socio-political context in the 1970s may only be pictured through cinematic montage. Montage herein meant as a visual answer to the ever widening social gap. We may well interpret this film’s montage as inspired by a poem of Rendra, Sajak Sebatang Lisong (Elegy of a Cigar). But montage as cinematic answer to Indonesia’s socio-political circumstances in 1977 has an enormous disturbing power. Poetry definitely plays a role in every society prone to injustice. Rendra’s poems are in itself a metaphor, a social analysis and a critic theory of the injustice in the New Order regime. In 1978, when Yang Muda yang Bercinta was first screened, the government banned the film. The appointed Minister of Information during the period, Ali Moertopo, declared the film as a potential threat to social order.

Owing to its disturbing power, we may wonder whether the strength of this film lies in Rendra’s fierce poem or rather in Sumanjaya’s filmic ability to influence society’s social circumstances in the New Order era.

The use of montage in Sumanjaya’s cinema is of course not surprising. Being a graduate of All Union State Institute of Cinematography, Moscow, Russia, the use of montage technique greatly influenced Sumanjaya. In Yang Muda yang Bercinta, Sumanjaya’s montage was based more on the poem of Rendra, playing Sony in the film, a student with ideas of freedom, democracy, and justice amidst New Order social, economy, and political situation which was getting more and more imbalanced at the time. The context of social disparity in Indonesia assumes the need of montage as a method to express a language that speaks of social relations that are causing injustice. Sumanjaya’s montage sociology would certainly be different in Russian montage tradition, from where he learned about cinema.

Pedagogical side of Sumanjaya’s montage in Yang Muda yang Bercinta uncovers the veil of Indonesia’s practice of capitalism which was prone to oligarchic economy and politics. From its narrative side, for instance, a wealthy friend of Sony whose father applies a practice of oligarchy with government officials in running his business. In other narrative, it is also described Sony’s conflict with his own father, a clash between individualistic and liberal views of youth with conservative and traditional views of the older generation. Parents’ expectation towards their children is seen as a legacy of colonial culture, where being a university graduate is viewed merely as a social status to gain position as an ambtenaar (government official). Visually, Sumanjaya was as if making an aesthetic attempt by bringing forward Rendra’s poems in the plot of conflicts in the film’s narrative. Beside Sony’s dialogues, there are also several theatrical satires to stimulate the audience’s ways of thinking. As a reflective tool with criticizing power, Sony’s dialogues might as well be considered as an introductory of an analysis to New Order’s developmental ideology. For instance, a dialogue when Sony and his lover were riding in his wealthy friend’s car on their way to Bandung Institute of Technology to attend poetry reading. Sony remarks, “I’m not after your old man, but the system.”

In other dialogue, Sony also performs a quite striking social satire of the feudal culture in the New Order era. This is shown in a scene where Sony is quarreling with his father. Sony’s father exclaims to be an honest hard-working man, yet unable to change the current situation. Sony summarizes his father’s disposition in a metaphor: “You’re jammed…” The dialogues well confirmed Rendra’s poetic and theatrical charm in the film. With this regard, poetic role may well be a filmic attempt as one mode of communicative expression.

Rendra’s role as an actor in Yang Muda yang Bercinta may be the main contribution to the quality of the film work itself. Especially, there are documentary scenes in the film in which Rendra recites his poetry at University of Indonesia and Bandung Institute of Technology. However, the connection between poetry and cinema in Yang Muda yang Bercinta—considering that Rendra is playing a role of a poet student—actually lies in the scene where Sony’s poetry recital is visualized in montage depicting poverty and the marginalization of the poor in the city. Rendra’s poem is documentarily visualized with the image of the company Astra Indonesia, while he recites in shrilling voice: “we must cease to purchase foreign formulas/textbooks may provide methods/but let us alone formulize our situation/we must roam the streets/reach out to the villages/to note down every symptom/and comprehend the true problem.” And a visual documentary of a luxurious car and buildings accompanying Rendra’s voice: “i query/but my question/collides the foreheads of saloon poets/reciting poetry on wine and the moon/whilst injustice arises right before their eyes.”

As a cinematic work, Yang Muda yang Bercinta provides quite an artistic reference of how film language is built. Besides profound poetry, dialogue, and Rendra’s acting capability, Sumanjaya’s aesthetic inserts in his cinema work provides filmic expression to Indonesian audience. For instance, in a scene where Titiek is waiting for Sony that would never appear because he is going out of town instead. Filmic logic of Sony departure is depicted by the sound of an airplane taking off, while visual image shows Titiek waiting before a house gate. Sumanjaya’s cinematic style reminds us to the filmic method in one of the scenes in Eric Rohmer’s sequel, Six Moral Tales. The aesthetic inserts that Sumanjaya put in Yang Muda yang Bercinta can be considered as an attempt in giving a practice of expression method which stimulates dialectic reasoning among Indonesian audience. Eventhough cinematic sensitivity may not yet be possessed by most Indonesian audience in general, but as a filmic method of work, Yang Muda yang Bercinta brings about several aesthetic codes that exercise reason, rather than empathy and naturalization among the audience.

The year 1978 is Indonesian context in terms of New Order’s development ideology which led to bureaucratic practices, as well as the emergence of new bourgeois class who certainly enjoyed a trickle-down effect from foreign capital. Unfortunately, the capital did not naturally trickle down to the lowest level of society. Instead, it trickled in oligarchic pattern to one or two certain enclaves. Much to this effect, the capital did not heed to even distribution but on the other hand, stuffed those few certain enclaves.

Poverty and wealth thus inevitably stand in close proximity, especially in the capital city of Jakarta. The position of a culture to its poet, just as of Rendra the poet to Sumanjaya the director, is certainly born out of social circumstances which requires the language of art—as a mode of expression to channel its restlessness—that can actually reach out to Indonesian sociology. The film Yang Muda yang Bercinta is the contextual answer to the era, where culture and art tried to withhold its role in society. In a firm manner, Rendra depicted this condition in his poem in the film, entitled Sajak Sebatang Lisong: “this is my poem/an emergency appeal/what is the meaning of art/if divorced from the suffering of others/what is the meaning of thought/if separated from the trouble of life.”

 

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¹W. S. Rendra (1935-2009) was an Indonesian dramatist, poet, activist, performer, actor and director.  Throughout his career life as a poet, he was known to be one of the most critical voices against New Order regime. Two years after the making of Yang Muda yang Bercinta, Rendra was arrested during one of his poetry reading. He was imprisoned for nine months without a single trial and, after released, was banned from performing until 1986.

 

«Translated into english by Efiya Nur Fadila»

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