{"id":3717,"date":"2014-04-29T09:00:20","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T22:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aiya.org.au\/?p=3717"},"modified":"2021-07-10T19:06:40","modified_gmt":"2021-07-10T09:06:40","slug":"film-review-something-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/2014\/04\/29\/film-review-something-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Review: Something in the Way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AIYA Victoria&#8217;s\u00a0Pingkan Palilingan reviews the opening film from this year&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/iffaustralia.com\/\">Indonesian Film Festival<\/a>,\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt2692476\/\">Something in the Way<\/a><\/em>: an unusually provocative film, which offers a &#8220;a harsh and vivid description&#8221; of Jakarta&#8217;s sex industry.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ix4vbRl6N6s\" width=\"640\" height=\"390\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s really getting in the way in Teddy Soeriaatmadja\u2019s new feature film, <i>Something In The Way<\/i>? It\u2019s not the transvestite dad who secretly works as a streetwalker to sustain his family as in Teddy Soeriaatmadja\u2019s\u00a0<i>Lovely Man\u00a0<\/i>(2011). This time, according to actor Verdi Solaiman (who plays Pinem in the film) who was in Melbourne recently for the 9<sup>th<\/sup> IFF, what gets in the way of the protagonist achieving his goal is taboo love and the harsh realities of life in Jakarta\u2019s slums.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, Soeriaatmadja explores the slums and impoverished parts of urban Jakarta, as he did previously in <i>Lovely Man.\u00a0<\/i>We are introduced to Ahmad (Reza Rahadian), a phlegmatic taxi driver who has no ambitions in life. At least within the first three minutes of the film, we already know what his source of pleasure is. Ahmad is shown masturbating in the cab to some magazine pinups hidden under the dashboard. At home, he does it again while watching bootlegged porn DVDs.<\/p>\n<p>Living across from Ahmad\u2019s room in the public housing (<i>rumah susun<\/i>) is Kinar (Ratu Felisha), a streetwalker and Ahmad\u2019s growing desire. However, Ahmad is caught between his sexual urge and his devoutness as a Muslim \u2013 where he is reminded repeatedly in a local mosque of the condemnation towards the sin of adultery. Following a series of encounters, an unusual relationship develops between Ahmad and Kinar until it ends in unfortunate circumstances.<\/p>\n<p><i>Something in the Way\u00a0<\/i>follows its predecessor,\u00a0<i>Lovely Man,\u00a0<\/i>in showcasing beautiful visuals of Jakarta street life and red-light districts \u2013 the backdrop of the thriving sex industry in the nation\u2019s capital, atmospherically shot by cinematographer Ical Tanjung (<i>Lovely Man<\/i>). Don\u2019t expect the movie to be overblown with sentimentality: it\u2019s a harsh and vivid description of what it takes for the lower class society to live.<\/p>\n<p>Only God (and the organisers of IFF) knows why\u00a0<i>Something in the Way\u00a0<\/i>was chosen as the opening night film for the 9th\u00a0Indonesian Film Festival. It was a fearless decision to screen such an unusual and provocative depiction of the more sordid facets of Jakarta. Plus, Indonesian viewers were in for a few surprises;\u00a0<i>Something in the Way\u00a0<\/i>might be the pioneer of (almost) graphic sex scenes and nudity for Indonesian feature films.<\/p>\n<p>However, Soeriaatmadja not only elaborates carefully on the loaded topic of sex and religion. The convincing yet evocative performance by award-winning Reza Rahadian brings us not to despise Ahmad, but rather empathise with him as we understand his struggles to be completely ordinary and \u201chuman\u201d. Ratu Felisha herself is a charmer with her gripping performance as Kinar, where we are brought to sympathise with Kinar\u2019s complete rejection towards compassion for her struggles to feed a family member.<\/p>\n<p>Even so, the twisting plot towards the ending seems to betray our recognition with Ahmad\u2019s characters that the director has built since the first minute of the movie. The ending almost feels careless; a local audience remarked how there was a tendency of reiterating the continuing stereotype towards Muslims. However, Soeriaatmadja fixes it up ASAP in the ending even before the viewers are able to spot this loophole. The director solves it with justice. At the end of the day, we will get the impression how \u201cimmoral\u201d behaviours will be rectified through punishment. Whether it\u2019s intentional from the director or unintentional, you decide. Nevertheless,\u00a0<i>Something in the Way\u00a0<\/i>opened the 9th\u00a0Indonesian Film Festival with a kick.<\/p>\n<p><i>Pingkan Palilingan attended\u00a0<\/i>Something in the Way<i>\u00a0as a guest of the\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/iffaustralia.com\/\"><i>Indonesian Film Festival<\/i><\/a><i>.\u00a0The opinions expressed in this article are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australia-Indonesia Youth Association or its partners.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AIYA Victoria&#8217;s\u00a0Pingkan Palilingan reviews the opening film from this year&#8217;s Indonesian Film Festival,\u00a0Something in the Way: an unusually provocative film, which offers a &#8220;a harsh and vivid description&#8221; of Jakarta&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/2014\/04\/29\/film-review-something-way\/\" class=\"more-link style1-button\">Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[508],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.0","language":"id","enabled_languages":["au","id"],"languages":{"au":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"id":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiya.org.au\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}