Review of The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) by Julie R — 28 Nov 2003

In anticipation of seeing the latest Peter Weir movie a couple weeks ago, I pulled one of his older films of the shelf to watch again.

[b]The Year of Living Dangerously (1983)[/b].

The film centers around Australian Broadcasting Service journalist Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) who is on his first foreign assignment: Jakarta, Indonesia, 1965. It is a film rich in contrasts. The photographer Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt, who earned an Oscar for this role) cannot remain uninvolved in the face of the poverty and disease of the people. He says that he feels he must "do whatever you can for the misery in front of you." But the journalist is the observer, and we observe the contrast between the native people in their misery and the Western journalists who observe them with a mixture of amusement and boredom, waiting for them to do something interesting.

Revolution is brewing in Indonesia. Hamilton has become involved with a British Embassy employee (Sigourney Weaver) and he now must balance the usefulness of her knowledge, which could bring him a great scoop, against the integrity of the relationship. Gibson and Weaver are so good in these roles. And Linda Hunt in amazing as Billy Kwan whose idealistic belief in fallible people leads to his tragic disillusionment.

This is a fine film that looks every bit as good today as it did when I first saw it 20 years ago.