Scheduled for release on Dec. 19, Habibie & Ainun 3 is the final installment of a trilogy immortalizing the heartfelt moments between Indonesia’s third president BJ Habibie and his wife Hasri Ainun Besari.

The title of the film, however, does not give it the justice it deserves as some predict it will outshine its two predecessors in production quality, budget and viewership.

The passing of Habibie, a plane engineer and technocrat, on Sept. 11 could be a factor into why people might flock to the theaters, but there are also other things worth noting about the film.

One of these is the storyline.

The first film in the trilogy, Habibie & Ainun (2012), was made as an adaptation of a book of the same name written by the former president after the passing of Ainun in 2010. Habibie wrote it as a memento of their 48 years of marriage, including the years in which he took on the role as caregiver for his wife.

The second film, Rudy Habibie (2016), a prequel, depicts a young, intelligent and nationalistic Habibie during his studies in Germany, where his dreams of building an aircraft industry in Indonesia grow. It also depicts his romantic involvements with a foreign student.

According to producer Manoj Punjabi of MD Pictures, the storyline for the prequel was drafted after an event where he met Habibie.

“I asked, ‘Was there any woman other than Ibu Ainun?’ Pak Habibie said: ‘Ilona’. That’s how we came up with the story,” Manoj said in a recent interview with The Jakarta Post.

However, it took him and his team of writers a lot longer to determine the right story angle for Habibie & Ainun 3, a prequel focusing on Ainun, a pediatrician and mother of two sons.

“I met Pak Habibie two-and-a-half years ago to walk through 10 ideas about the next movie and each of them was considered not OK. The scriptwriting process was so difficult. I thought of giving up. That’s when I thought of something and talked about this with the team,” Manoj said.

“I understood that Ibu Ainun had specialties, a first lady, a physician who was good at running a family, and I believe she was good at doing many things. But who was she during her childhood? What was she like when she was 8? Or 16? You don’t become great from day one. It’s a journey.”

The team, consisting of about a dozen writers, built the story from the angle of what a woman in the early part of the country’s independence had to deal with to become a physician in a male-dominated world.

The 25th draft of the script got the nod from Habibie, marking the start of the filmmaking process.

Assuming the role of Ainun’s mother, midwife Sadarmi Besari, was actress Marcella Zalianty, who was overwhelmed at first with the challenge of playing a Javanese woman dealing with the struggles of Indonesia postindependence.

“There was no record whatsoever of the character but while in Yogyakarta, I happened to meet some artists who knew her stories and it helped me to get into character,” she told the Post.

“Her story was about women empowering themselves and other women. Although the situation is different today, we still need this kind of inspirational story.”

As it is meant to be a romantic drama, one of few formulas that, according to Manoj, actually worked for Indonesian moviegoers, there were romantic scenes not just involving Ainun and Habibie.

This brings us to another noteworthy aspect of the movie: Reza Rahadian.

The actor had been allowed to play Habibie looking like himself in the first two movies.

However, this time around, for the few scenes where the character is in frame, the creative team applied heavy prosthetic makeup on Reza and utilized computerized-generated imagery (CGI), as seen in the movie trailer.

“Reza has similar facial features with Pak Habibie. If in the first film, Reza is Habibie. Now, we made him look exactly like Habibie. It’s a bit complex. For young Habibie, we used Reza’s face, but for Habibie in his old age, half is Reza’s face and the other half is Pak Habibie’s face,” Manoj explained.

“We had considered bringing the work abroad but it turned out we could do the CGI work here with our own artists and they could even do it better.”

The rendering was done by Indonesian director and visual effects artist X.Jo also known as Meet Joe Black, as Manoj humorously called him in reference to the 1998 movie starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins.

The CGI work eventually shot up production costs although, unlike with its predecessors, filming and postproduction was all done in Indonesia.

“To give the audience a complete movie experience, we also increased the production value, from the coloring to the sound mixing and even with the inclusion of an orchestra from Russia. We used Dolby Atmos [for sound technology]. We’re not doing this halfheartedly,” Manoj said.

“[The movie] is a must-see for all Indonesians.”

Marcella said that director Hanung Bramantyo and the production team, crew and actors gave their all for the movie, the filming of which ended in June.

“It’s a beautiful movie that will make the viewers love Indonesia more,” she said.

As Manoj said, it may not be the last film in the Habibie & Ainun cinematic universe.

“There are so many characters in it for some spin-offs, but to be honest, after the passing of Pak Habibie, I don’t know where to move. I see some potential, inspiring stories to share, but I should wait and see how the market responds. If the Marvel Cinematic Universe can have 23 films, James Bond 25 films, why not Habibie & Ainun?

“If the [market] loves it and if I find an interesting, feel-good story, we would consider producing more.” (hdt)

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