IMPIAN KEMARAU (RAINMAKER)
Indonesia, 2004, 83 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Ravi Bharwani.
To make an impact on its audience, especially an audience unfamiliar with Indonesian cultural and religious traditions, this film needs its sub-title: a poem of hope, dreams and illusions.
It is certainly a poem. Its narrative is difficult to describe. Rather, a meteorologist hoping to study the weather over a village and indicate when the clouds can be seeded for rain intersects with a village singer who also acts in what one might call a geisha manner and her servant who cares for her mistress and an ox. The young man lives in the modern world of technology: his scenes are more realistic. The singer both sings and serves the men of the village in a solemn (slow) and dignified ritual: leisurely paced scenes. The maid takes on the languorous mood of her mistress, or else is busy caring for and washing the ox. Interwoven with the characters are some performances of the Indonesian puppets, the Wayang. As the three different characters and the moods cross, as pace changes, as beautiful, painterly photography and tableaux are edited together, the poetic, dreamlike nature of the themes is developed.
Towards the end there is a hanging due, it seems, to the influence of a falling star, an ill omen. But who dies is unclear. Is it a dream also? Or, has the meteorologist dreamed it all? Or has he died and come alive again – because there is speculation about the past and the future (the theme of illusion). There is very little hope as the man and the woman may never meet again and, back in the real world, the scheme for making rain is revealed as phony political promises – and all that is rained down on the villagers are pages of propaganda.
This is a film for those who like their cinema as art and enigma.
1. The film subtitled as a poem of hope, dreams and illusion? How well did the film illustrate its subtitle?
2. The poetic nature of the film, the different styles and paces, the contemporary and technological present, Indonesian country life and the village, the imaginative and poetic landscapes and seascapes, the ritual traditions in relationships between men and women? The combination of realism and magic realism? Myth-making? The importance of the present, the changing nature of the past and the future?
3. The location photography, the island, the seascapes, the village, the meteorologist’s room, the room for the singer where she conducted her ministrations, the bar? The musical score?
4. The structure of the film: the introduction to the meteorologist, to the singer, their interactions, the men of the village? The cynical background of Indonesian government and the experiment for rain-making – and the political ending? The mythical aspects, especially the falling star, the hanging and suicide?
5. The focus on the meteorologist, the realism of his studies, the weather and the balloons, the clouds, the possibility of seeding the clouds for rain? His computer, contact with headquarters? The contrast with his relationship with the singer, his going to the bar, the puppet performance and the wayang? The villagers and their criticism of him? Their not believing his mission? His further experiments? The relationship with the singer, washing of his feet, ministrations in slow traditional ritual? The final sexual encounter? Did he hang himself – why? His reappearance? The information about the sending of leaflets from the plane, this happening at the end?
6. The singer, her place in the village, in the club? Performances? Her maid, the ministrations of her maid? Her rituals with the men, the meteorologist, the head man of the village? The reaction to the suicide? Her going into the bush with her maid? The realism of her future – the mythical significance of her future?
7. The maid, her care for the oxen, washing it, cleaning it, tending it, in the sea, on the beach? Her service of the singer, dressing her, sewing the thread? In the house, witnessing the visits of the men? Her going with her mistress into the jungle?
8. The village, village life, the men at the club, their cynicism about the government, the wayang performance and its beauty, criticism of the young man, the comment on the singer? The head of the village, his going to the singer?
9. A perspective on Indonesian life at the beginning of the 21st century – realism and mysticism?
