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ESSAY: Watching 'Floating Chopin' in Bali
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What if Chopin had died in Bali? (Shutterstock/File)
F
em>Floating Chopin is a short film by Wregas Bhanuteja, a young filmmaker who won the Leica Ciné Discovery Prize at the last Cannes Film Festival for another short film Prenjak. I had seen this film before in Jakarta, but decided to watch it again, together with his other short films, during the 2016 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.
The film starts with a scene inside a car on a road in rural Java. A young dating couple, speaking in colloquial Javanese, are on the way to the beach, a secluded one on the shores of Yogyakarta. “Why do we have to go there?” asks the girl. “Well,” replies the guy, “it’s much nicer than going to Bali. The beaches in Bali are crowded with tourists.”
A roar of laughter broke out in the viewing room, which was a dimly lit café in the center of Ubud. I did not hear this kind of laughter in Jakarta. Perhaps all these people were laughing at themselves, tourists who may have flocked to the beaches of Kuta, Legian, Sanur or Nusa Dua.
The guy begins showing off to his girlfriend about his taste in music. We hear Chopin’s Nocturne Opus 9 no. 2 not only as background music, but as an important part of the storyline. The guy turns up the volume and we are all lullabied by Chopin while looking at the scene of a rural road in tropical Java.
The guy then tells the girl about his trip to Paris. “I’ll show you later at the beach,” he said. Then when they arrive, he opens his laptop computer and voila, we get to see a video of his Paris trip. He does not show her the Louvre, not even a shot of the Eiffel tower, as most travelers would probably do. Instead he shows his visit to a cemetery.
The girl asks why. “The tombs are all beautiful and artistic,” he says. “Look at the beautiful angel over there, and this magnificent-looking statue of the deceased person.” Then he shows the grave of Jim Morrison of The Doors, on which he had placed a flower as a tribute to this famous rock musician. The camera moves and stops at another grave. We read the inscription on the tombstone: Fryderyk Franciscek Chopin. Now we know that Chopin’s
Nocturne does have a significant meaning to the film and the title. Chopin, as we know, was one of the composers of the Romantic era.
The guy asks the girl to imagine what would happen if Chopin had died in Bali. The girl looks puzzled, while the guy starts to hum a pentatonic melody, and this, when I first saw it in Jakarta, was when I became struck by a feeling of déjà vu. Mind you, this is not a Balinese traditional song. It was written by Guruh Soekarnoputra as part of his album titled Guruh Gypsy.
Five urban kids in Jakarta formed a band to play progressive rock music, heavily influenced by Genesis, and conducted an experiment, combining rock music with Balinese gamelan. That would not be too surprising these days in Indonesia, but this was 1977. At a time when young urban Indonesians were frequently accused by their elders and the government as being too westernized, and having no interest in traditional culture. But here they were experimenting with a different music genre that had never existed before.
The guy in the film (who also happens to be the director) starts chanting, “Yen Chopin padem ring Bali?” What if Chopin had died in Bali? Two Balinese waiters standing close to me were stunned for a moment. They listened intensely to the words and started silently gasping, while the non-Balinese audience in the room, at least some of them, foreigners and Indonesians alike, laughed slightly nervously as they read the subtitles. Or was I just interpreting too much?
This is how the lyrics go. “If Chopin died in Bali, his ashes would float in the southern ocean, contemplating the soils of Bali now being destroyed by foreigners. A boat capsized, caused by the wrath of the gods of the ocean, and Chopin still may not believe that he could be the one destroying another culture”.
This was definitely a mild criticism of the impact of tourism on Balinese culture. The song ends by saying that Chopin in reality never reached Bali. He would never know that his race had taken over Kuta. The locals have forgotten the Supreme Spirit now. Chopin’s tune pierces my heart, with a strong sorrowful beat. Remember my brothers and sisters in Bali, to always be mindful.
Maybe it was not the intention of Wregas Bhanuteja to send a message about tourism in Bali in this film, but I just could not help looking through the window to see a few coconut trees. I remembered there used to be a regulation that there should be no buildings higher than a coconut palm, to preserve the natural beauty of the island. And now?
No, I am not against modernity. Many of the comforts of urban life are now readily available in Bali, which would not be found in the 1970s, like ATMs and transportation. But some other changes do often seem out of place, like building modern villas on land that used to be rice fields, or constructing so-called minimalist hotels amid a culture that adores elaborate decor and intricate carvings. And what happened to that regulation about no high-rise buildings?
The guy in the film then asks his girlfriend to take a picture of him dressed up like Chopin, with his wavy hair being blown by the ocean breeze. The film ends and I begin to wonder: what if Chopin attended the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival? Just some wild imagination that came to my mind as I left the venue.
