This is an essay about the 1982 film, "The Year of Living Dangerously." Not a film review but a personal reflection about operating in unfamiliar territory from the perspective of a foreign news correspondent.
This essay was submitted in January 2021 as part of a course requirement for International Communications (CCM749), Public Relations - Corporate Communications Program at Seneca College.
The 1982 Mel Gibson movie, “The Year of Living Dangerously,” is not entirely what it pitches as a story of “a love caught in the fire of revolution.” It was not the love that the Australian journalist Guy Hamilton found in Jill Bryant at an unlikely time and place that defined the story. But rather, it was the expression of love in all the other ways people do that is beyond self for what one believes in.
The journalist, played by Gibson as Guy, was on foreign assignment to cover an unfolding political revolution in Indonesia. While he may have fallen in love with a British Embassy officer there, the greater love he showed was that for his job. He risked his life for a story. While it can be argued that such hazards come with the job, still journalists didn’t sign up with their lives. It can only be love for one’s job that they are willing to risk it all.
In Guy’s coverage of the upheavals in Jakarta were other stories of love from different faces of the revolution. There’s the newsreel cameraman and photographer, Billy Kwan played by Linda Hunt, whose character takes a dramatic center in the film with his own story of love for what is true, noble and just for the people of Indonesia. Billy kept detailed files on everyone he loves, saw the real story from the hungry faces, the sick and the helpless, and deeply cared and wept with them. His love as translated in his expression of outrage that meant his death, gave the film its single grand gesture.
Then there is also Kumar, played by Filipino actor Bembol Roco was Hamilton’s assistant and driver. He was a secret member of the Communist Party of Indonesia. His was a different love for country but one that is also willing to sacrifice, lay down his life for what he believes in.
But the story of love of Jill is different. Passing on an information to Guy that might save his life, but which was unauthorized, was a risk she took for love. Yet Guy, the journalist that he is, chose the “big story” over his love story. But then again for a journalist, no story is worth one’s life, unless it is one’s own and if it’s for love. Already losing an eye, Guy decided to leave to live, and to love.
The Director’s Cut
The movie has shown the challenges a foreign journalist encountered in unfamiliar territory. Kumar was Guy’s bridge to the language barrier. But Kumar was not just a voice that interpreted the local language, he also gave the underground movement a face that Guy saw up close.
And there’s the cultural gap between the east and the west that presented a real challenge to understand the people and the situation they are in. And Billy was key to make Guy see what Billy saw from the heart.
“You like my puppets? If you want to understand Java, you have to understand Wayang: the sacred shadow play. The puppet master is a priest. That's why they call Sukarno the great puppet master - balancing the left with the right. Their shadows are souls and the screen is heaven. You must watch their shadows, not the puppets. The right in constant struggle with left. The forces of light and darkness in endless balance. In the West we want answers for everything. Everything is right or wrong. Good or bad. But, in wayang, no such final conclusions exist.”
That’s how Billy was more than just a local contact to Guy. He was more than the lensman. When he said to him, “you for the words, me for the pictures. I can be your eyes,” Billy was more than the eyes. He opened Guys eyes too.
“Don't think about the major issues. You do what you can about the misery in front of you. You add your light to the sum of all light.”
This is the line from the movie as delivered by Billy, which to me was the core message of the director. When on a news coverage, journalists are thrown in the front seat of history and a real story. While the job is to write, to tell the story as it is, the journalist is also given the unique opportunity to do something.
The story a journalist pens is just one of many stories, it is a headline only for a day. A journalist’s worth is not all about a scoop or a celebrated exclusive story. In telling the story as Guy sees it from the ground is bringing to light the reality for the world to see. But what you can do as a human being, how you are able to touch the lives of the least of those people in your own way beyond the call of duty – as Billy did, is shining a light to humanity.
A Personal Hindsight
Watching this old movie brought me back to own story as a journalist back in Asia, where I once played both a Billy and a Guy. I’ve worked as a local contact – also referred to as researcher or fixer - for visiting foreign correspondents, and I was also a foreign correspondent myself deployed all over Asia. As it was in “The Year of Living Dangerously,” similarly, I did exclusive interviews with rebels, terrorists, covered lightning rallies of leftist groups at the US embassy, a military coup, a peaceful revolution that ushered a regime change.
What I saw in that film I also did, and far more. I’ve dealt with many “Jills” (but minus the love story angle) and worked with many “Kumars.” I too have walked in the shoes of Billy, I’ve seen real sad stories and wept behind the camera. But unlike Billy, my outrage can never be expressed while wearing a journalist’s vest. And as Guy did, so did I also risk my life for a story – tear-gassed in a rally, rounded-up in a failed mutiny of soldiers, almost held hostage by local terrorist and secessionist rebels.
Those were my years of living dangerously in what may be a thankless job. But I never regretted any part of it, because I knew I loved what I did then. Like Guy, I left to “really” live - here and now, not dangerously.
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