Cinema presents dark side of Jakarta

“A place, where we can all celebrate loneliness”.

This sentence was said by Andre, a character in Kuldesak (1999), played by the late actor Ryan Hidayat, referring to Jakarta.

The character committed suicide following the steps of his idol Kurt Cobain.

The movie consists of stories about four individuals, who live in Jakarta dealing with their personal problems, highlighting the dark side of Jakarta.

Beside Andre, there’s Aksan, a rich boy whose dream is not supported by his father so decides to steal from him. There’s also Dina, a ticket seller at a movie theater who can no longer distinguish dreams from reality, and Lina an advertising agency worker who decides to take the law into her own hands after she was raped.

Kuldesak and Bernapas Dalam Lumpur (Breathing in the Mud, 1970) are the points of research for Thomas Barker, a PhD Candidate of the Sociology Department at the National University of Singapore.

They were presented at an international discussion held by the University of Indonesia recently, displaying how the city is presented in cinema.

“[Kuldesak] shows how the city is perceived by youth. Many of them feel alienated in the city,” said Barker.

It differs from Bernapas Dalam Lumpur, which shows how newcomers survive in the capital that appears to offer many dreams. In reality, however, they are crushed, such as what the character Supinah experiences, who becomes a prostitute after she arrives in Jakarta in search of her husband.

Ekky Imanjaya a lecturer of a film study program at Bina Nusantara International University said Jakarta was the setting for many Indonesian movies.

Prominent Indonesian film producer and critic, the late Asrul Sani, once even said Indonesian films were actually “Jakarta” films, which portray the life, views and aspirations of a certain class of Jakarta residents.

Ekky focused his observations on Jakarta in a movie Eliana Eliana (2002) about a girl who strives to survive in the hustle and bustle of Jakarta.

“Minor details in this film successfully represent the mental landscape of Jakarta,” he said.

Details such as Eliana’s best friend Ratna, who tries to earn money doing many odd jobs: from becoming a freelance salesgirl (she helps Eliana become a freelance salesgirl) to a nightclub singer.

Ratna represents how urban people do almost anything to survive.

Another theme portrays how children play around narrow alleys and the street because their neighborhood has no park or other area that serves for recreation.

“In general, the film represents the dichotomy between a chaotic city and the dream city.

“As a chaotic city, Jakarta represents disorder, the ruin of both physical spaces [urban planning, housing crisis, spatial problems] and the people [poverty, difficulties in finding jobs, ways of survival, stressful urban living],” Ekky said.

“But still no matter how their life is in this harsh reality, those urban people remain in Jakarta to survive.

“They still hope and believe that Jakarta is the source of happiness. But mostly, instead of a dream city, the representation of Jakarta as a city of madness dominates scenes,” he said.

Seeing how Jakarta is presented in those three movies reminded people of a statement of late Jakarta governor Ali Sadikin (1966-1977), as quoted by Barker at the end of the discussion: “I really want to show newcomers that life in Jakarta is unpleasant. It’s like hell”.

— JP/Irawaty Wardany