This is why Setan Jawa was such a special highlight of the Holland Festival #HF17

Setan Jawa is the latest film by prominent Indonesian director Garin Nugroho (b. 1961). It is a 'silent' film, shot in black and white by Teoh Gay Hian. It was shown at the Muziekgebouw aan t IJ during the Holland Festival last weekend. The music accompanying the film is live played by Rahayu Supanggah Gamelan Orchestra and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. Inspired by the cinematic universe before the talkies, the film tells the story of a young Reed Matter. He falls in love with an unattainable girl and makes a pact with the devil to get her after all.

Surrealism

Setan Jawa is a surreal film about social injustice and desire. Nugroho uses the parallelism of social reality and magical and mystical relationships, as is common in Javanese culture, to make intriguing connections and indirect social criticism. Incidentally, much of this eluded me during the screening. It was only when I was updated afterwards by better-informed colleagues [ref]Thanks to Ingrid Jejina, Gerard Mosterd and San Fu Maltha[/ref] that things began to fall into place.

But even without knowledge of Javanese traditions or an affinity for the complex political-social realities of today's Indonesia, there is still a lot to see in Setan Jawa. The film was shot in six days without a detailed script and freehand, improvising with the actors and dancers. The result is dazzlingly beautiful. Especially striking is the simplicity with which the scenes are designed, as if with a few strokes of the pen. This austerity contrasts sharply with the wondrous, magical-realist setting in which the story takes place.

Gamelan and classical orchestra

Gamelan orchestra leader Rahayu Supanggah and Australian composer Iain Grandage are jointly responsible for the music. Grandage's melodramatic lyricism for classical scoring matches silent film highlights like Nosferatu and Metropolis. This connects quite naturally with the whimsical, sometimes jerky, staccato and beautiful tone of the gamelan tradition. The 20-member gamelan orchestra with a large number of singers made a big impression anyway. The expressionism of both music traditions fit together wonderfully and were very effectively juxtaposed and superimposed.

Banish

Actually, the whole project seems Setan Jawa on a joyful exercise in the corruption and rewriting of traditions. In the space created between drifting expectations and hard-to-place redemptions, complex and (politically) sensitive issues can also be touched.

Sometimes relatively innocuous aspects are rehashed and rearranged. Combining traditional sarong patterns with contemporary Indonesian fashion is a case in point. The pranksters or teasers with their white-painted faces and red-painted lips seemed to have been put through a Japanese geisha bath. More sensitive, even I could understand, are the erotically charged scenes.

18- 19 june : Holland fest , setan jawa, with live kamareorkestra amsterdam-rahayu supanggah gamelan orkestra pic.twitter.com/bWsfBG37kM

- Garin Nugroho (@garinfilm) June 5, 2017

Penis

A temple, where an occasional penis figure carved out of stone passes by, plays a prominent role in the film. It turns out to be a very old Hindu temple, the Candi Sukuh, where not only sexual pleasure and fertility but also spiritual unification are honoured. The liberal treatment of sexuality within Hinduism has been a problem since Islam came to Java in the 16th century. Fuelled by advancing Muslim fundamentalism, temples are even today neglected or even actively destroyed, a colleague told me. I thought I was seeing a cultural-historical highlight, allowed to serve as the backdrop in a mythical tale. In today's Indonesia, the temple turns out to be part of a political power struggle.

Apart from mystical traditions and rituals, colonial history also plays a role in the film. More precisely, it is about the 1920s. That was when the Dutch colonial regime industrialised agriculture. This caused great poverty among the rural population on Java.

Minor offence

The film opens with the story of a little boy who is detained for a minor offence, complete with chain and iron ball on his foot. The child draws some comfort from the company of a turtle with a beautiful snout. When a guard taunts him by making off with the turtle, the little boy gropes the guard. The child is subsequently tortured by other guards and the setan (Satan) was born.

Contemporary statement

Nugroho, with this social bronning turning the devil figure into a contemporary political statement. The horrific injustice of colonial rule can, of course, be extended to all sorts of contemporary dictatorial or corrupt regimes. These produce just as many devils, with all their consequences.

That no father lives in the aristocratic girl's house is also unusual. In fact, no father figure appears in the entire film. Still, it feels like a kind of emasculation of the film. Besides the reed matter as pretender, only the devil appears as a relevant male being. By no means a small statement, bombarding the adult-male order into a tormented demonic gang.

Wonderful release scene

After the young man makes his pact with Setan, he has enough money to pose as a nobleman. The two young lovers simmer in mutual desire. The erotic imagery is gentle and open in a way that is unprecedented not only for Indonesia. When girl tries the setan persuade him to break his pact, it results in a beautiful, erotic dance with the devil. I can't fathom how provocative this restoration of the temple's mystical-sexual function is to a contemporary Indonesian audience, but I rarely saw such a good release scene.

Allegory

Without dialogues and voiceovers, with a single intertitle as a guide, you have to rely on a sensitive eye as a viewer anyway. Devils and ghosts, wearing those typical finely carved, tiny Javanese masks, and the yarng, clownish figures with white-painted faces and perky red-painted lips, accompany the young man and young lady on their werdegang. Setan Jawa uses the specific historical context of 1920s Indonesia merely as a backdrop. Rather, the film is an allegorical tale of how things end badly for a man who makes a pact with the devil.

The film is understated, which gives the motley procession of characters and scenes an obvious power. Even if I often did not understand what exactly was going on, the film by no means forces a semi-anthropological or otherwise exotic perspective on me. On the contrary: Setan Jawa rather has something hip about it.

Artifice

In a crafty combination of originality and artifice,[ref]artifice[/ref] of Javanese individuality and artistic appropriation, of a wild narrative shot in an understated style, with crisply staged scenes, Nugroho not only manages to engage his audience. He also entices it to watch a servant washing the insides of her lady's legs. Or turns the setan with the gruesome mask not only a tormented figure, but also a recognisable creature of flesh and blood.

Appropriation is indeed often used to fight oppression, think of Beggars names or the gays who took the sex appeal of Marilyn Monroe appropriated. The level at which Nugroho does this, in collaboration with all those artistic colleagues, is unprecedentedly sophisticated. He manages to cut across the maze of traditions in film, music, dance, literature, sexual and other social customs and political realities to give shape to a very real desire.