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'Hakim Sarmin': Mediocre satire with no integrity
Directed by seasoned theater director Djaduk Ferianto and based on a script written by Agus Noor, Hakim Sarmin fails to deliver a satiric punch line describing Indonesia’s society.
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Trapped: Doctor Menawi Diparani (Susilo Nugroho) gets trapped by his own device. (JP/Bagas Rahadian)
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irected by seasoned theater director Djaduk Ferianto and based on a script written by Agus Noor, Hakim Sarmin fails to deliver a satiric punch line describing Indonesia’s society. It instead relies heavily on triggering cheap laughter by using excessive amounts of shallow, sexist jokes, most of which center on the exploitation of a woman’s body.
The play portrays a fantasy realm in a time when nearly all of the nation’s judges are being treated in a mental institution. Those who were not institutionalized are rumored to have been murdered and their bodies thrown into a lubang buaya (crocodile pit) — clearly a reference to the infamous site of a mass grave containing the remains of Indonesian army generals who were murdered during the 1965 massacre.
The head of the institution, Dr. Menawi Diparani (Susilo Nugroho), believes that all judges were overcome with madness and therefore need to be institutionalized.
Meanwhile, inside the institution, judge Sarmin (Butet Kartaradjasa) is planning a revolution to topple the government with his fellow patients. Sarmin believes that as judges, they have a moral obligation to become the sole owners of truth and justice, and people outside the hospital are endangering the country because they are no longer monitored by judges.
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“Revolutions are always triggered by the mad,” Sarmin says as he leads his fellow judges in singing a revolutionary song with the tagline Demi Bangsa dan Negara (For the Nation and the State).
For Sarmin, madness has become the way of life in today’s society, which continuously demands for justice but also keeps breaking laws. Therefore, for the sake of the country, he and his fellow judges must do their best to ensure that madness stands firm in the nation.
Separately, village leader Mangkane Laliyan (Djaduk), fellow politician Bung Kusane Mareki (Arif Wijayanto) and Mangkane’s lawyer Sudilah Prangin Angin (Citra Pratiwi), suspect that Menawi has nefarious reasons for putting the nation’s judges into his mental institution. They then ask security officer Kunjaran Manuke (Very Ludiyanto) to investigate what is really going on inside the hospital. What follows is a bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all) among the main characters. Treason, conspiracy theories and the formation or breaking of new alliances take place based on each character’s self-interests and agenda. Eventually, the play depicts a situation in which the lines between justice and injustice, sanity and madness, and heroes and villains are completely blurred.
Visually, the play is indeed delightful to watch. The stage boasts bamboo art works depicting gigantic humanoid figures by Bagong Gonk & Froghouse, which take audience into a dark, dystopian realm of a broken-down society.
Music by Purwanto successfully complements the acting, including some impromptu improvisations delivered by the cast.
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However, the play’s overall narration does not really present an impactful satire of today’s society. Sex jokes are utilized excessively without giving any further context into what the play is trying to convey. Numerous references to ejaculation, sexual intercourse, the vagina and women’s buttocks are repeated over and over again.
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What is also lost in judge Sarmin is integrity. Casting Butet — who was recently lambasted by environmentalists and activists for promoting mining company Freeport as an environmentally friendly corporation — as the main character of a play that aims to criticize the morality of today’s society is probably not the wisest decision.
How can a critique of today’s morality be justified when it is uttered by a man who put an environmental tag on a corporation that is widely held responsible for the destruction of Papua’s forests and the gentrification of the province’s indigenous people?
Butet’s defense of Freeport gave him such a bad reputation that activists and environmentalists placed him on a blacklist of artists whose integrity can no longer be trusted.
Overall, with its shallow sex jokes, Hakim Sarmin offers nothing more than juvenile angst and anxiety. It is the type of play that belongs in a senior high school’s pensi (art fair), because its satire and jokes would only be considered as edgy material in the teen segment.
