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

"The Year Of Living Dangerously" Book/DVD Review



I didn't do any notes for this so it'll be a brief review. I was given this book for Christmas last year and peered at it's cover with disinterest until I decided to take it on holidays with me. I became more and more engrossed with the story of Aussie journo Guy Hamilton (was author Chris Koch a James Bond fan mebbe?) and photographer Billy Kwan as I lay by the pool in Vanuata and devoured the book over the space of about a week - which is bloody quick in my universe.

Koch takes an amazingly simple story of a journalist trying to survive in Indonesia and imbues it with so many different levels - I immediately latched onto the love triangle between the two males and Jillie (possibly because I had the film's actors in the back of my mind), but the peripheral characters are also richly etched and hjave their own stories to tell - such as Cookie the narrator, Kumar and Colonel Henderson. On top of that is the political unrest of the country Guy is trying desperately to report on and the more socio aspects of Jakarta itself as unearthed by Billy.

When I got home one of the first things I did was make a mad dash for the video store to spend money. Little did I realise that the film has been released on DVD. It was NTSC and devoid of any special features, but it at least was in anamorphic widescreen. I snatched it and raced home.

I had realised while reading the book that I had never seen this film. There was a video night when I was a child that this film and the David Cronenberg film Dead Ringers had been rented. I had seen Dead Ringers at the cinema and wanted to watch it again. I squirmed in my seat as we watched it, realising no one else shared my love of the strange and unusual story of the Mantle twins. Appalled at myself for thinking other people would have liked this masterpiece, I sample about ten minutes of TYOLD and then trotted off to bed. Or whatever. I think I was about eighteen at the time, so I can't understand why I could handle the adult complexities of a film such as Dead Ringers, but couldn't handle the maturity of TYOLD. Maybe I just wasn't ready for a political drama at the time (likely) or maybe I just wanted to see Jeremy Irons have kinky umbilical cord sex with Genevieve Bujold (more likely).

The only other significant fact I knew about the film adaption was that Linda Hunt had received an Oscar for her role as Billy Kwan. Going into it I thought that this aspect of the film would have probably dated and I wouldn't have accepted it. Oh, ye of little faith. This film absolutely bowled me over. I still say that the book is richer and deeper than the film, but Peter Weir and co. must be given significant credit in distilling the dense book into such a tight, mature film. Lauded at the time of it's release, my impression is that the film needs to be re-discovered. It's one of the few Peter Weir films that hasn't been treated with the respect it deserves (I think Fearless is the only other film of his not given any kind of deluxe treatment).

The transfer while watchable, doesn't appear to have had any kind of restoration done to it, and is sorely needed to contend with the rich, dark, steamy night scenes - the opening shots of shadow puppets could barely be seen on my television. Otherwise, the film is an achievement in technical mastery - impressive considering the size of the Australian film industry at the time. Russell Boyd, who is one of Australia's best cinematographer's, shots the film widescreen and gives it a wonderfully steamy, dark, rich look and Maurice Jarre, who collaborated with Weir during the eighties and nineties on many films, conplements the visuals with a typically haunting precussive synthesizer score.

Reading the book I couldn't help but the think of the actors that I knew played certain roles in the film. Mel Gibson was at the perfect stage in his career to play Guy and gives him a wonderful balance between the naivety of a new country and the world-weariness of a journalist. Linda Hunt is truly outstanding as Billy, you never once do you think about the truth of her performance, and for someone who had never had a major film role before, completely disappears in the role and is more than a match for Gibson.

Sigourney Weaver, for me, was the odd one out. Reading the book, I could not imagine her in the role. Watching her carefully in the film, I was reasonably happy with her (mainly because, c'mon, it's Siggie), but couldn't help but feel this character had been compromised the most in the translation to the big screen. Although Weir, Koch and co-screenwriter David Williamson had to drop many supporting characters and plots (such as most of the Russian agent sub-plot) they retained enough for me to be more than happy. Weir populates the supporting cast with a number of fine Australian and international character actors: Altman regular Michael Murphy, Bill Kerr, Noel Ferrier, Paul Sonkkila (why the hell isn't Phoenix and Janus out on DVD yet?).

That's funny, I said this review would be brief and yet it's turned out longer than most. Funny?