Atmosphere and brilliant casting

Press, 27 February 1984, Page 12

Atmosphere and brilliant casting

THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY Directed by Peter Weir

Screenplay by David Williamson, Peter Weir and C. J. Koch The Australian director, Peter Weir, who has shown his ability to conjure up atmosphere in films like “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” and “The Last Wave,” succeeds again with “The Year of Living Dangerously” (Savoy) which has been a long time in coming to Christchurch. The setting is Indonesia, 1965, just before the overthrow of the government, and Weir, with dark, claustrophobic photography and powerful scenes of demonstrations and violence, takes us back to a time when President Sukarno, in his own words, was “living dangerously.” Sukarno’s government is stumbling towards a coup that will end the strongman’s reign, while, at the white man’s club, the journalists and diplomats are downing whisky and waiting for the inevitable.

Among them is an Australian radio reporter (Mel Gibson) who is put on to a “scoop” about foreign Communists shipping arms to the insurgents. The lead was given to him by Jill (Sigourney Weaver), an assistant to the military attache at the British Embassy, with whom the reporter tans m love, and is then torn between betraying his source of information or his journalistic instincts to reveal the news.

Tying all of this — indeed, the entire film — together is a pixie-eared, dwarf-sized Eurasian photo-

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grapher, Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), who functions as an all-knowing tipster and also helps the other two fall in love, while more than a little in love with both of them himself. He describes his attitude towards life when he says: “The advantage of being a dwarf is that you can be wiser than other people, and no-one envies you.” Kwan, however, is never bizarre. Instead, he comes across as a figure of compassion, affection and strength. It is Kwan who points out the ever-present exploitation, poverty, famine, disease, tyranny and intrigue in the world around them; and it is he who is kind and generous to the unfortunates of his own colour.

Kwan also acts as the voice-over narrator, who comes out with little gems like: “Most of us become children again when we enter the slums of Asia”; and it is on his untimely death that the film also seems to come to an end.

Weir has certainly brought about a brilliant coup of his own by casting in the role of Billy Kwan a New York actress, Linda Hunt, whose only other film appearance was as the mother of a giant in Robert Altman’s “Popeye.”

At 1.45 m, with physical features and colour that could be made to look Eurasian, and acting experience born of years of work on the New York stage, Miss Hunt had all the requirements — except that she was a woman.

“It was the furthest thing from my mind to cast a woman in this role,” said Weir, “but I defy anyone to find a single seam in Linda’s totally convincing performance. No-one, male or female, could be better.”

Her performance is so 'remarkable that she should be remembered with Ben Kingsley, as Gandhi, for their most astonishing acting during the past 12 months. Mel Gibson also continued his solid performances from the “Mad Max” movies and “Gallipoli”; and it was a pleasure to see again the very attractive Sigourney Weaver, who is remembered for her part in “Alien.” Although financed by American money from MGM and mainly filmed in the Philippines, Weir has nevertheless managed to keep “The Year of Living Dangerously” as an ex-« ample of Australian film' making at its best.