Movies I Love, Part II: “The Year of Living Dangerously”

One of the most intriguing characters in all of film is that of Billy Kwan in Peter Weir’s 1982 masterpiece, The Year of Living Dangerously.

The film is set in the turmoil of Sukarno’s Indonesia in the mid 1960’s. The dictator is trying to hang on, while the forces of change and poverty have turned the exotic locale into a tempest. Kwan is a photographer/ liason/ fixer. Kwan knows everybody from government officials to drivers to those mired in the poverty of the political regime. He is everywhere in his Hawaiian print shirts.

Kwan becomes the go to connection for ambitious new journalist in town, Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson). Kwan gives him tips. He paves the way for access to the best stories. Kwan, diminutive in stature, is part Asian, part something else, maybe Australian, maybe European. He even introduces Hamilton to the woman he wished to marry, Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), a British attache with but a few weeks left on her assignment.

Kwan’s manipulations and personality are complex, his intentions not always clear. The character is the center of this romantic/ political potboiler. Kwan desires to control all within his domain, especially Hamilton, both a surrogate and rival. It is Kwan’s film.

Most astonishing of all is that Kwan is played by a woman, the incredible Linda Hunt, until this role, a rather unheralded actor based in New York. For her work here, she won an Academy Award, the only actor ever to do so for playing a character of another gender. It is one of the most ambitious and realized performances on celluloid by any actor playing any type of role.

While Mel Gibson, due to his misguided religious and political focus has become easy fodder for criticism, he is more than up to the acting challenges of this engaging journalist character. The romance between Weaver and him is as steamy as the locale. And it is portrayed without any explicit scenes whatsoever.

Good romances need context. The Year of Living Dangerously has it in spades. Danger on the streets. Turmoil in the halls of power. A triad of characters trying to weather a time clock, the situation and each other.

Despite a spotty record of film making, when Peter Weir is good, he is very, very good. In this film he captures all the tension of the time and place. The movie is blessed with three stunning performances, none more so than that of Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan.

1 Comment(s)

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI

Leave a comment