Sang Pencerah (2010)

Biographical motion pictures are the new fad in the Indonesian film industry. Three biopics have already been released this year and a number of upcoming titles have also been made public.

The three biopics released this year are Tjokroaminoto '€“ the teacher of the Indonesian founding fathers; Tiga Napas Likas (Likas'€™ Three Breaths), the life story of the wife of national hero Djamin Ginting, and Love & Faith, which revolved around the success story of banker Kwee Tjie Hoei, also known as Karmaka Surjaudaja.

Coming up later this year is a biopic of the country'€™s first military commander Sudirman and the life story of Vice President Jusuf Kalla'€™s mother Athirah.

At least two different biopics about women'€™s emancipation heroine Kartini and another about first vice president Mohamad Hatta will be released next year.

The Athirah film, helmed by Riri Riza, was adapted from her biography written by Kalla, while Kwee'€™s biography was penned by former state-owned enterprises minister Dahlan Iskan.

Despite the huge budget needed to produce biopic films, in which preparation often includes extensive research and interviews with living descendants or friends, the genre is still considered to have little public appeal.

In some cases, the films have sparked controversies over the choice of cast, and story plots that have led to demonstrations and legal suits.

According to author and Tempo film reviewer Leila S. Chudori, there are at least four underlying problems in the industry.

The most harmful, according to her, is intervention from the descendants of the person or an organization that they belonged to.

In most cases, these people are the ones who have paid for the production.

'€œAs a result, the person appears god-like and one-dimensional,'€ she said at a discussion titled History Films in Indonesia in Serambi Salihara, South Jakarta, on Wednesday.

A poor education system that discourages people to contrast different theories also made it difficult for both filmmakers and viewers to take in alternative versions of history, she said.

'€œFear of blasphemy or public controversy may have led to the current state of biopic films that run flat and chronological without drama or conflict. They look more like visualized CVs.'€

November 1828 (1979)

Another problem that impacted the artistic value of the biopic genre was that filmmakers often failed to use their poetic license and add fictional characters or scenes.

'€œIt'€™s a big problem if viewers started asking whether a scene was a fictional because the illogicality of it,'€ said Leila.

Another speaker in the discussion was Budi Irawanto, the chair of Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival (JAFF) and lecturer at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.

In his presentation he underlined that both biopic and history films '€” the latter revolving around a significant period of a figure'€™s life or a certain historical event '€” are categorized as feature films and should not be seen as a documentary in which everything must be depicted exactly as the public perceives it.

'€œThe 2013 film Sukarno, directed by Hanung Bramantyo, stirred controversy even before the production started, as people questioned the choice of lead actor who they claimed had no physical resemblance to the nation'€™s founding president,'€ he said.

Budi said that both filmmakers and the public needed to learn more about biopic or history films that emphasized narrative aspects, rather than analyzing history.

'€œThere is something fictional about them, of course, but they can serve as complementary to history books because film has the ability to convey messages in an emotional way.'€

He cited history films from the 1950s and 1960s directed by Usmar Ismail and Bachtiar Siagian. Usmar in his films, such as Darah dan Doa (The Long March), Lewat Djam Malam (After the Curfew) and Enam Djam di Djogja (Six Hours in Yogyakarta), portrayed the psychological conflicts of characters during the revolutionary period, while Bachtiar in his films such as Turang (Bloodline) and Piso Surit (Love Song) put the spotlight on the social and politic conditions surrounding the characters.

Both speakers agreed that Indonesian biopic films took nationalism as the main aspect of the narrative.

'€œWhile history films or biopics can be used as either educational or propaganda tools for people with money, they are not all bad because film can be the window to see different angles of a character, the bad and the good of a person,'€ said Budi.