New take:  Azhar Kinoi Lubis’ Surat Cinta Untuk Kartini (A Love Letter for Kartini) takes a fictional approach to understanding one of the country’s historical figures, Raden Adjeng Kartini. (Courtesy of MNC Pictures)

Recent Indonesian biopics on historical figures have all fallen into the trap of glorification.

In the past few years, Indonesian biopics have had a tendency to dehumanize their subjects, depicting historical figures as flawless beings untouched by common faults and resulting in boring and preachy films.

At the same time, biopics that try to humanize their subjects by introducing even the slightest glimpse of his or her flaws as a human often draw an angry backlash from the highly sensitive Indonesian spectatorship.

While this may not necessarily be a bad thing from a marketing standpoint, it is more than enough to discourage filmmakers from pushing the boundaries in their filmic depictions of the outstanding figures of Indonesian history.

Azhar Kinoi Lubis’ Surat Cinta Untuk Kartini (A Love Letter for Kartini) vaunts its supposed difference from previous Indonesian biopics, taking a fictional approach to one of the country’s most famous and controversial historical figures, Raden Adjeng Kartini.

Kartini’s legacy is one that polarizes opinion in the archipelago.

On one side, many Indonesians acknowledge her contribution to the feminist and women’s emancipation movements during the early years of the 20th century.

On another side, many believe that Kartini does not deserve her status as a feminist pioneer; despite her initial refusal to succumb to the highly patriarchal nature of Javanese traditional custom, she eventually agreed to be subjugated to a forced marriage with a man who already had three wives.

Another frequent criticism of Kartini is that she was used as little more than propaganda material for “Javanization” during the New Order era.

Amid these controversies, a fictional take on Kartini’s life could have offered something refreshing and interesting. It offered an opportunity for the filmmakers to further radicalize Kartini as a feminist, or take new angles on the commonly known stories of her life.

Instead, however, Surat Cinta Untuk Kartini contents itself with repeating the thousands of clichés and received ideas on Kartini that all Indonesians have grown accustomed to.

Not only does the film fail to offer anything interesting on Kartini, it is, ironically, also filled with subtle propaganda for patriarchy.

The film begins in an elementary school classroom, in which a female teacher (Melayu Nicole Hall) is struggling to make her students pay attention to a lesson on Kartini she is attempting to give.

A male teacher (Chicco Jerikho) enters the room and takes a different approach, telling his own story of Kartini.

The story then takes the audience via flashback to Jepara, Central Java, and introduces a character named Sarwadi (also played by Chicco Jerikho).

Sarwadi is a postman, a widower and a member of the lower social class during the pre-independence era in Java; his place in society is easily identifiable by his lack of surname.

One day, delivering post to the Jepara regent’s manor, he accidentally glances at Kartini (Rania Putri Sari), one of the regent’s daughters, and immediately falls in love (a scene played with stupendously unexciting dramatization).

Sarwadi then enrolls his only daughter, Ningrum (Christabelle Grace Marbun), at Kartini’s school for girls as a way to approach her. Unsurprisingly, Sarwadi and Kartini establish a pseudo-romantic friendly bond.

While it is clear Sarwadi is in love with Kartini, it remains a mystery until the end of the film whether she shares the feeling or not.

The superficial presentations of pre-independence Java, the oddity of the Javanese characters speaking in Indonesian rather than their own language, the highly exaggerated musical score and the stiltedness of the main cast’s acting are all problems, but they aren’t the film’s main problem.

The main problem with the narrative presentation of this film is that it assumes its audience is stupid and ignorant. Alas, so many scenes are so preachy and didactic, the film itself ends up resembling a moralist patriarch.

One scene in which this is particularly true is the one in which Kartini tells Sarwadi that her main reason for educating girls is to ensure that when they grow up, they will know how to “fulfill their obligations as women”.

There is also a scene that seems to serve as a justification for the practice of polygamy.

While there are very rare cases in which a woman sincerely allows her husband to marry another woman for one reason or another, in most instances, polygamy is regarded as an injustice for women.

In a sickening scene, the film shows Kartini readily accepting her mother’s argument that a woman should know her place in society and should disregard her feelings completely when her husband decides to marry another woman.

Toward the end, the film boldly tries to consider whether Kartini has betrayed her own struggles by agreeing to marry a man with three wives. However, this spark is too little, too late, and the film ends in the shallow quagmire of narrative glorification.

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