Review of Balibo (2009) by Mike M — 30 Jul 2011

A complex equation, one that seeks to filter the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975 through the experiences of six white Australian journalists... It at least has the self-awareness to address the issue it raises - the sensation that, once again, the tragedies of what East dismissively refers to as "brown folk" are being translated in terms white folk might more easily relate to - in a scene where East and his guide debate what the former's actually there for: East defends himself by insisting that solving the mystery of the missing newsmen will somehow intrigue his readers (and, by extension, English-language viewers of the DVD) into considering the wider tragedies of East Timor.

(Note, also, how all these white men's stories are framed by the testimony of a Timorese woman before a truth-and-reconciliation commission.) The casting helps it: LaPaglia's battered humanity ensures a more abrasive presence at the centre of the film than, say, Sam Waterston in "The Killing Fields", and cuts against whatever worthiness lurks within this material.

The characterisation of Roger East isn't notably deep (we're supposed to intuit more or less everything from the way he washes down a handful of pills with a swig from a tinny), but the writing is clever in showing us how East was attracted to East Timor as a job that would stop or further fund his boozing and pill-popping; he emerges as actually a good deal less heroic (and less effective) than the newsmen, who went out there to bring this story to the world, only to find themselves being shot at, and much worse besides.

These latter scenes - reliant for their impact on the hateful, unprovoked behaviour of shouty, anonymous Indonesians towards a group of Caucasians established as stout family men and professionals - are the trickiest in the film, and it would be easy to take against "Balibo" because of them: its first UK screening prompted a lengthy John Pilger rebuttal, critical indeed of the way Connolly had shaped this history.

Yet I thought it honoured the intentions of that original quintet of newsmen: you come away from "Balibo" knowing more about East Timor, and its people, living and dead, than you did going in - and that can't, surely, be an entirely bad thing.