MARLINA THE MURDERER IN FOUR ACTS
Indonesia, 2017, 90 minutes, Colour.
Marsha Timothy, Dea Panendra, Egy Fedly.
Directed by Mouly Suriya
Western audiences will not be familiar with films from Indonesia. The most successful, internationally, have been the crime and police thrillers, The Raid series.
The title gives an indication here of the structure of the film. There are four headings for the different acts, Robbery, Journey, Confession, Birth. And at the centre is a middle-aged woman, a widow living alone, Marlina, played by Marsha Timothy.
The action is set in the Indonesian countryside, something like the Western frontier for a Western audience but somebody commenting that this Indonesian setting is like an Eastern frontier.
However, the principal focus is on the issues of women in Indonesia. The men are generally presented as violent and brutal, exploiting the women, not hesitating in physical violence and sexual violence.
In the first act, Marlina is at home, a stranger Markus arrives, telling her that his friends are coming and will steal her cattle and animals, which they do, and then gang rape her. In the meantime, she is to prepare a meal for him and for his friends, demanding chicken soup. When the friends arrive, they are boisterous, looking forward to the sexual violence. However, she is able to put poison in the soup and four of them die. Markus then attempts the rape and, in the middle of it, Marlina gets a machete and beheads him. She has to flee before two others arrive on motorbikes).
The tone is set and one commentator, probably correctly, reminds us of the style of Quentin Tarantino in such films as the Kill Bill series and The Hateful Eight.
In the second act, Marlina a takes the head of Markus in a box, intending to go to the police, explaining the situation to them and getting help. She meets a pregnant friend on the road and they catch the bus to go to the town, Marlina with her machete to the driver’s throat and the other passengers scurrying away.
The third act is the confession. In the town, she encounters a little girl at a restaurant, has a meal, entrusts the head to the little girl warning her against looking inside and goes to the police. The officer takes down notes, has an old typewriter, does not have enough staff to pursue the case, says that Marlina must be examined by a doctor but, again, no one is available.
The title of the fourth act focuses on the pregnant woman who also has become a victim of the surviving men, her being brutally treated, thrown to the ground and hit. But, in this Eastern frontier, there are mobile phones and there is a lot of connection. Ultimately, Marlina is reunited with the pregnant woman, some violence against the men who hold them, then giving birth – and the possibility of new life (as well is the cycle continuing).
A significant film from a predominantly Muslim country, a feminist assertion of the value of women, a condemnation of the brutality of men and their presumption.
