American Pie Presents: Beta House All Things To All Men Monk Comes Down the Mountain Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them The Purge: Election Year For the Love of Spock Yell for the Blue Sky Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back So Young 2: Never Gone DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Ash vs Evil Dead Save the Last One A More Perfect Union The Ghost of Harrenhal How Did We Get Here? Black Maps and Motel Rooms Legends of Yesterday (2)The requested URL /en/media-subtitler/?lang=norwegian was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.In “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” director J.J. Abrams has loyally followed the playbook that he inherited from the franchise’s creator, George Lucas. One proof of this devotion is in the alien dialogue crafted for the film’s interplanetary ensemble. The language that we hear from most characters is English, which is supposed to be a stand-in for what the film’s creators call Galactic Basic, a kind of lingua franca for the Star Wars universe.
But we also hear Chewbacca speak in Wookiee growls, and R2-D2 and BB-8 use the... The Moment 'La La Land' Mistakenly Won an Oscar 'Moonlight' Beats 'La La Land' in a Steve Harvey Moment Oscars 2017: Red Carpet Fashion Review Warren Buffett’s Annual Letter: Five Key Takeaways Hey Small Spenders: Japan's Generation DReview: A Copy of My Mind is definitely a copy of Indonesian versatile filmmaker, Joko Anwar’s mind towards particular issues in Indonesia, more specifically, Jakarta, as – at least – projected in his social media. After experimenting with romantic comedy in Janji Joni a.k.a Joni’s Promise (2005), spawning Indonesian first noir in Kala (2007), spilling blood in two consecutive psychological thrillers – Pintu Terlarang a.k.a The Forbidden Door (2009) and Modus Anomali (2012), Mr. Anwar brings his witty, groundbreaking mind home, in seemingly his most deviant/smallest/most hyper-realistic but most personal work. In brief, A Copy of My Mind seems to devotedly follow three-act structure, with a prolonged first act.
During the first act, we’re introduced to Sari (Tara Basro) – an attractive beautician in a small-time salon who loves to watch pirated whimsical B-movie wonders in her damp, cramped boarding room. On the other side, we’re also introduced to Alek (Chicco Jerikho) – a man without phone or IDs whose job is making subtitles for pirated DVDs. Separately, Sari and Alek become our eyes to observe the hustle and bustle of Jakarta’s suburb with the heat, the traffic, and other beautifully suffocating details in welcoming an upcoming presidential election. By the end of the first act, Sari met Alek in an unexpected way – when she’s making complaint to her usual DVD shanty about the quality of subtitle of some movies she’s been watching. But their encounter wasn’t going anywhere until Alek caught Sari looted a DVD as an act of revenge. Before long, they start seeing each other in a very likable, sweaty romance. When it seems it’ll lead to an explosive and voluptuous romance, A Copy of My Mind suddenly takes an unexpected turn when Sari, now working in a bigger salon, stole a DVD from a prisoned customer.
What she thought as a hybrid-monster movie was actually an evident of a corruption broker case in presidential campaign. It’s surprising that A Copy of My Mind covers a poignant political thriller behind an already likable romance. The Via Dolorosa approach to reach the Calvary is definitely unpredictable and, might seem, random although it makes sense. Mr. Anwar really takes the time to collect all the details to cleverly culminate into an irreversible hazard, without being explosive and hasty. Frankly, it’s not the high-profile twist of fate in the end which makes A Copy of My Mind big; it’s their modesty that wins. Senses of authenticity and chemistry become all that matters in creating the whole set-up. Without big set pieces and artificial production designs, Mr. Anwar and DoP Ical Tanjung choose to highlight the constriction of Jakarta by stuffing every corner of the screen with natural details that represent the metropolis. The crowd, the ambiance, the mood, and the intimacy are showcased in a low-key idyll, which lingers long after the ending.
Similar to absorbing the beauty of Wong Kar Wai’s works, Joko Anwar’s work in A Copy of My Mind is a tour de force for him in what a character called as ‘craftsmanship’—it’s exactly like that on-screen description: it doesn’t need to look expensive, it needs to feel expensive. In getting that job done, both main actors lend their charisma to Anwar’s craftsmanship. It’s charming chemistry between Chicco Jerikho and Tara Basro that seasons the authentic beauty of it, in additional to beautiful mise-en-scene powered by the director. In the end, A Copy of My Mind is surprisingly a poignant political-thriller sweetly wrapped in a sweaty romance with most likable couple of the year. It indeed probes more questions than answers from its unpredictable storyline, but it’s modest in a barely patronizing reflection of thought about Jakarta by Joko Anwar. Drama Written & Directed by: Joko Anwar Starred by: Tara Basro, Chicco Jerikho, Maera Panigoro, Ario Bayu Runtime: 114 mins
Spread the LieLike this:In The Act of Killing, director Joshua Oppenheimer pulls off the impossible: He confronts great, incomprehensible evil and puts a human face on it. The horror is that it looks like a kindly grandfather. Anwar Congo is a fit, trim, sharply-dressed man who would go unnoticed, until he starts to speak about his past. Congo was one of street punks who became a death squad leader after the military overthrow of the Indonesian government in 1965. Anyone deemed problematic by the new regime — intellectuals, artists, ethnic Chinese — were immediately branded communists and marked for execution. According to the film, one million people were killed in the span of one year. In an early scene in the film, Congo revisits a rooftop that was one of his preferred killing floors. Initially, he and his men would bludgeon their captives to death. But that method proved too bloody. So Congo came up with a way of garrotting his victims with fishing wire, which he happily demonstrates for the camera.
Then he performs a little dance, just for fun, in the exact spot where he presided over countless murders. Congo also talks about going to the movies — Hollywood pictures were his favorites — then crossing the street to a place where prisoners were held and “killing them happily,” the echoes of Elvis Presley musicals playing in his head. That description sparked an idea in Oppenheimer’s mind: Inviting Congo and some of the other paramilitary officers who carried out mass executions to recreate the acts via short films set in various genres. In a lavish musical, female dancers emerge from a giant structure shaped like a fish, and Congo and fellow executioner Herman Koto lip-sync to Born Free — they’re liberating angels, sending the souls of their victims to an idyllic afterlife. In a horror movie, Congo’s abdomen is slashed open and Koto (dressed in bizarre drag) feeds him his own intestines. In a war movie, an entire village is decimated and its women raped, exactly the way the stern-faced soldier Azi Zuldakry remembers doing it.
In a crime drama, Congo plays a suspected communist who is interrogated, confesses under duress and has his throat slit. Via these films, The Act of Killing puts us inside the heads of men who are otherwise incomprehensible. They go on talk shows and brag about all the people they’ve killed. They hang out with governors and Indonesia’s vice-president. They say things like “All this talk about human rights pisses me off.” Zuldakry chuckles as he remembers going on a killing rampage, stabbing every Chinese he met to death, even though his girlfriend at the time was also Chinese (he killed her father, too). Sometimes they wonder if making the documentary is a bad idea, since it might reopen a chapter in Indonesian history the country has long pretended never happened. In one astonishing sequence, a gangster works his way through a marketplace of Chinese vendors, extorting money from each of them in front of the camera, as if he were doing nothing wrong. The Act of Killing demonstrates how a society built on fear, violence and perpetual threat quickly learns to play by the rules.
The three million members of the Pancalisa Youth paramilitary group, who dress in camouflage fatigues the color of flames, are the bullies who keep everyone in check, their eyes cast downward and their mouths shut. The only moment in the film where we see an honest reaction by a citizen to the reality they must endure is a brief shot of the control room of a TV station, where the crew briefly expresses their disbelief and disgust in the establishment. But although the former squad leaders repeatedly claim they don’t feel guilty — if they had done something wrong, wouldn’t they have been punished? — Congo’s conscience starts to grow heavy over the course of the film. He admits he is troubled by nightmares. He starts flubbing his lines during the production of the short films, occasionally refusing to do another take. And in the film’s astonishing closing shot, we watch as Congo’s guilt and remorse seem to devour him whole. The Act of Killing is a bold reinvention of the documentary form, as well as an astounding illustration of man’s infinite capacity for evil.