One of the things that I was taught in graduate school is to always try to separate the art from the artist. When studying literature, there are an awful lot of writers who, in life, were varying degrees of terrible. There are other reasons too, but that’s one of the big ones. I try to apply that to my general interest in film, and for the most part, I can more or less do it. That said, I do have my limits, and one of them is Mel Gibson. There’s too much of his behavior in the public record that make it hard to enjoy his work since, as an actor, he’s often front and center in everything he does. Why then should I watch The Year of Living Dangerously? Well, if anything, Gibson was fairly young, looking almost like a different person, so I can always pretend he’s someone else. Oddly enough, Signourney Weaver looks like she’s barely aged at all.
But honestly, I was curious about Linda Hunt. She won an Oscar for this one as a Chinese-Australian man with dwarfism.
Australian reporter Guy Hamilton (Gibson) comes to Indonesia in 1964 to replace a colleague who left somewhat suddenly. So suddenly he didn’t bother to introduce Guy to his local contacts. There’s a lot of unrest in the country between a rightwing military government and a communist party looking to expand and push all Westerners out at the same time. Fortunately for Guy, he meets Billy Kwan (Hunt), a photographer who is more than happy to get Guy some good stories so long as he can photograph them, making the two partners. Billy has plenty of contacts, but he also has a strong moral code and keeps files on people he likes. At a certain point, Guy also meets Jill Bryant (Weaver), assistant to the military attache in the British embassy, and the two start a relationship. However, Guy’s hunger for stories amidst the growing political turmoil will probably get him in a lot more trouble as things get increasingly unstable.
As I watched this, it struck me that while the Westerners had an enclave of sorts, separate from the life of actual Indonesians, Billy Kwan was easily the most interesting character in the movie. Much of what Guy does seems rather familiar as he is essentially a more or less crusading reporter type of character while at the same time spending little time with the actual citizens of the country outside of the handful he works with and little else. He romances Jill, and while Gibson has always had some natural charisma, I never felt much interest in what happened to Guy while Billy was clipping photos, narrating the movie, and keeping files on people he knows. Why? Guy thinks he might be a communist spy, but unless I missed something, I don’t think the movie confirms that. Jill says she’s aware of Billy’s habits, but she likewise doesn’t seem to care.
If anything, Billy is the only one of the various reporters and embassy personnel who actually interacts with average Indonesians, even more or less adopting a family. He can still be one of the guys, albeit one that gets picked on by some of the others, but he’s actually out there. Heck, for a good portion of the beginning of the movie, I actually thought it was more of Billy’s story, but then Guy starts to hang out with Jill and Billy fades a bit into the background.
Now, Hunt is playing a person who is half-Asian without being half-Asian herself (we’ll set aside for a moment how she’s also playing a man because…well, that’s not something I think it worth worrying about), and I would hope such a role would go to an Asian actor today. But that doesn’t make Hunt any less compelling. The rest of the movie about Guy and his escapades in journalism as he proves something of a disappointment for a lot of people he spends time with before learning a few harsh lessons about life in Indonesia, to say nothing of pointing out some of his own hypocrisy is fine, but really, I was much more invested in Billy Kwan than Guy Hamilton.
Then again, maybe I am not that much able to ignore Gibson as I had hoped when I started the movie.
Grade: B+
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