The leader: Sultan Agung (Ario Bayu) leads his people as they prepare to march for the siege of Batavia.

You can tell a Hanung Bramantyo film when you see one.

For more than a decade, film director Hanung Bramantyo has established his own formula: romance and a fervor for greatness bundled up into one.

He tends not to let a scene sit for a while. This either leads to success as happened in Ayat-Ayat Cinta (Love’s Verses), or cloying turgidity.

His latest film, Sultan Agung: Tahta, Perjuangan, Cinta (Sultan Agung: Throne, Struggle, Love), a retelling of the story of one of Mataram’s greatest sultans, falls into the latter category.

The film is bookended by two different phases of Sultan Agung’s life in the 17th century. The first one follows his adventures in his padepokan (training village) near Kotagede, former capital of the sultanate of Mataram. This was when Indonesia didn’t have its name — laws or borders were governed a different way (you wouldn’t behead suspected rebels in your in-group, as the film graphically shows, today).

Everyone around the young Sultan Agung (played by Marthino Lio) — known colloquially as Raden Mas Rangsang — is seemingly under the impression that he is not the son of Panembahan Hanyokrowati, the sultan of Mataram. He practices with his guru, Ki Jejer (played by the late Deddy Sutomo), and is smitten by a resilient villager Lembayung (Putri Marino).

Then the sultan dies, necessitating the ascendancy of Mas Rangsang, although he is the son of Sultan Hanyokrowati’s second wife.

The first wife (played by Meriam Bellina), bitter over her mistreatment, plots the murder of the sultan but is caught, leading to Mas Rangsang, instead of her son, becoming the Sultan Agung we have come to recognize.

During these adventures, we also see the romance between Lembayung and Mas Rangsang blossom — made complicated by the divergence in their social strata, he is of the higher class, she of the lower.

The portrayal of the class dilemma — along with the other Javanese details — are savory. It’s always a treat to watch a historical set piece handled with care — the abdi dalem attire, the padepokan, right down to the accent and mannerisms.

Homage: Mas Rangsang, before he is known as Sultan Agung, shows respect to his elder.

Hanung, this time, hits it out of the park. And there is a captivating scene ending the first part: Where the sight of Sultan Agung sitting on the throne segues into a Javanese drawn replica. It has a sumptuous look.

But a lot of the other things feel shoehorned. The romance between Sultan Agung and Lembayung, for example, does not need to take up that much space in its more than two-and-a-half-hour runtime to deliver the film’s main thesis — Sultan Agung’s sultanate was one of the first to dare to look the Dutch in the face and would inspire others to do the same.

Sultan Agung is one of those films that might remind you there is a function to the phrase “loosely based”.

And the second part does not help much. It involves the reign of the older Sultan Agung (played by Ario Bayu) and how his vigor to unite the archipelago against the terrors of the colonizers sometimes came at the expense of prudence or caution.

There is something interesting about the character Tumenggung Notoprojo (played by Lukman Sardi) who works for the sultan but smells the strong scent of his own ambition. The character represents the movie’s moral ambiguities.

His storyline, however, recedes as the movie concentrates on the events leading to Sultan Agung’s calling card: the siege of Batavia.

In theory, the siege was ambitious — like a mouse trying to tame a giant. And Sultan Agung is not a weak jester: the Mataram Sultanate did conquer Surabaya and a score of other places.

The second part of the movie deals with impossibilities and it arrives at its conclusion pretty neatly: That the archipelago does not have to win the battle as long as it eventually wins the war.

The actual scenes from the siege are shoddy. You see the soldiers march and fall in slow motion. It loses any semblance of nuance. The fighting scenes are alright — the older Lembayung (played by Adinia Wirasti) is game for every challenge.

Ario spends his time screaming his guts out whenever his plan does not go over very well; Lukman fares a little better with his quiet performance.

Though at times overwrought, Sultan Agung is a great exercise in historical detail. Hanung said he sought inspiration from “two historical notes”, which include the history written by H.J. De Graaf, Babad Tanah Jawi (History of the Land of Java).

Sultan Agung makes good use of its historical expanse, but it does not run with the risks it poses.

On a roll: The Dutch defend the walls of Batavia.

— Photos courtesy of Mooryati Soedibyo Cinema

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Sultan Agung: Tahta, Perjuangan, Cinta

(Mooryati Soedibyo Cinema; 140 minutes)
Director: Hanung Bramantyo
Cast: Ario Bayu, Marthino Lio, Putri Marino, Adinia Wirasti, Lukman Sardi, Christine Hakim, Meriam Bellina, Teuku Rifnu Wikana