Ranking the Movies I Watched in Indonesia
From worst to best: Joker 2, Conclave, Kraven the Hunter, and Kuasa Gelap.
I’m flying back to the United States in the next few days. And thinking of my time here in Indonesia, I realized one important thing: I went to the movies more often, definitely the result of being around family. Now I’ll be honest, I hate modern movies. They suck, especially Hollywood movies. Of course, all the years of being isolated from Hollywood’s latest serving of turds made me wonder if I had been too harsh. Now I know that I was being too generous. But let’s get going before I start ranting.
Also, there will be spoilers. You have been warned.
Joker: Folie à Deux
First we’ll start with my least favorite movie I’ve watched in Indonesia: Joker: Folie à Deux, though I’ll call it Joker 2 from this point on because I’m not a dork. Where do I start? What about all the stupid songs that killed the pacing of the movie? I get that Lady Gaga’s playing Harley Quinn, but they really went overboard with the musical aspect of the film.
More importantly, the subversion. Keep that term in mind because this’ll be a theme in this post. I remember the controversy surrounding the movie. Many saw the film to be a big middle finger to the people who liked the first movie and was drawn to the main character.
And they would be right.
Now personally, I haven’t watched the first movie. And I’m not a zoomer. So I don’t really understand the appeal of the homicidal clown. But I know subversion when I see it. Like everyone else in the audience, I expected the movie to end with Joker breaking out of prison with Harley’s help. That’s certainly where the movie would have gone if it wasn’t for subversion.
Instead, we have the Joker getting raped by the prison guards.
Yeah…
What else is there so say? No more from my end. Though if you want a good analysis of the film taken from a political and cultural standpoint, check out
’s article: They Will Make You the Villain Then Laugh When You Agree.Verdict:
Conclave
Speaking of middle fingers and subversions, if Conclave isn’t the embodiment of those things, then I don’t know what is. My friend
in his article - The Conclave’s Letter to Christianity - wrote that “at the heart of the movie’s controversy is its portrayal of the humanity of the men involved at the highest levels of the Vatican”. I disagree:
But let’s just put that aside for the moment. Even without that bit of subversion, there’s still the subversion in terms of storytelling. I maintain that the most natural way for the story to end is for the protagonist, Cardinal Lawrence, to be elected Pope despite his earlier insistence that he was not “a serious candidate” after all of the other real candidates fell off.
I honestly have a lot more thoughts on this, probably because I just watched it. But a newsletter issue of
- Joy, Judgement, and Conclave - put my feelings of the movie in words better than I could have:To be a thriller, there must be stakes, and the audience must buy into them. But while “Conclave” is about the Church, it is utterly — almost self-congratulatingly — devoid of faith. It leaves a void at the center of the plot, and the characters, which you feel rather than see as it drains the drama from every scene.
There’s a great deal this film gets wrong, both in terms of the rude legal mechanics of a papal interregnum and the theological and political contours of the voting college, to be sure.
…
The real problem with “Conclave” is it neither trusts the natural drama and stakes of its subject — instead relying on the Dan Brown-esque absurdity of a dead pope’s carefully calculated plan to elevate an hermaphrodite — nor does it allow for even a moment’s authentic spiritual tension.
God and faith are not present among the cardinals, but kept firmly in the background, out of focus, to serve only as color and backdrop like the rest of the Vatican scenery.
I’ll let
’s words stand without commentary. And please read the whole article on the movie - much recommended.I will also add that in terms of ‘ecclesiastical inaccuracies’, I wouldn’t really have much of a problem with them to begin with if people aren’t convinced that this movie is a “real life” portrayal of how the Catholic Church works. And no, I’m not exaggerating. I watched this movie with my brother and my parents. As we left the theatre, my non-Catholic parents treated this movie as if it was real life, as if the cardinals portrayed are real people and not the product of the imagination of a man whose works even Wikipedia associates with anti-Catholicism. You think I made that up? Nah, I got proof:
The only reason I’m ranking Conclave higher than Joker 2 is because at least this movie was competently made. Despite my misgivings throughout the movie, this movie kept my attention until the end. And I would have seen this movie, flaws and all, in a positive light if it wasn’t for that twist. So maybe, more than anything, I should be thankful for that stupid ending.
Verdict:
Kraven the Hunter
Given how negative I have been so far, and that now I’m getting into a movie that almost everyone thinks negatively of (or so it seems), some of you may think that I also hate this movie…
Eh. Not really.
Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed Kraven the Hunter. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have much of an expectation for it to begin with. Regardless, I like the character of Sergei Kravinoff, his journey, and his complicated familial relationships. As a hero, Kraven was likable and I found myself rooting for him.
Heroes you want to root for, villains you want to root against… that should be the baseline for any work of fiction. But apparently, not anymore. So just for that, I put Kraven the Hunter higher than Joker 2 and Conclave.
That said, remember the theme of this post: subversion. And yes, this film has it because of course it does - it’s a Hollywood movie. Throughout the movie we are introduced to the Foreigner, an assassin who uses hypnosis to disorient his enemies. He looked to be a character who was finally a match for Kraven. And at first, the matchup seemed to be living up to the billing, with Kraven being outmatched by the assassin who looked ready to deliver the final blow. How will Kraven get out of this?
The answer is Calypso, AKA literal magical black girl, blowing the Foreigner’s head off with a crossbow out of nowhere.
…
How anticlimactic.
But other than that, I enjoyed the movie. It’s by no means my favorite movie, but I liked it enough to look up Kraven the comic book character. And now I feel cheated because I would have loved the big game hunter Kraven of the comic books; the movie Kraven is basically the land version of Aquaman.
Oh well…
Verdict:
Kuasa Gelap (Dominion of Darkness)
This is the only Indonesian movie on this list, and I consider it to be the best of the four. Make that what you will.
But seriously, I really had a blast with Kuasa Gelap; I honestly didn’t think I would. I’m not the biggest fan of horror movies, especially Indonesian horror movies. Also, when I read the synopsis of the movie which describes the main character Romo1 Thomas as a “priest who doubts his faith”, I began to cringe inside.
Little did I know, I was projecting my American mind onto the Indonesian moviemakers. Upon watching this movie, I was surprised by how Catholic this movie is.
I don’t know if the writers and the director of the movie are Catholics, but if someone told me that they are, I would believe it. Meanwhile, if someone told me that the writer and director of Conclave are Catholics, I would not believe it. At all.
At the very least, I would imagine them to be Catholics in the same way I would imagine an Indonesian with “Islam” on his government ID card who eats pork and drinks alcohol to be Muslim.
But I digress.
I’ve heard a story of how the actor playing Romo Thomas, Jerome Kurnia, studied Latin for his role in the movie. I haven’t determined the veracity of that story, but I believe it. That’s how much thought went into this movie.
It felt like I’m watching the product of some guy in Indonesia who had been watching one too many Fr. Chad Ripperger videos and decided to make a movie about it, but taking place in Indonesia. And I love it.
All that being said, this movie isn’t perfect. It made use of all the tropes and tricks that people hate in horror movies. Things like jump scares and stuff. So if you don’t like those things, you probably wouldn’t like this movie.
‘Different strokes for different folks’, as the saying goes.
Further delving into this movie, a reading from the synopsis might lead one to think of The Exorcist. And it’s a reasonable comparison. I wouldn’t be surprised if the makers of Kuasa Gelap were inspired by The Exorcist. The characterizations seem to line up pretty well, in both movies we have…
A young priest experiencing a crisis of faith having to take part in an exorcism (Romo Thomas in Kuasa Gelap, Father Karras in The Exorcist)
An old priest, a veteran exorcist with a health problem (Romo Rendra in Kuasa Gelap, Father Merrin in The Exorcist)
A young girl suffering demonic possession (Kuasa Gelap differs from The Exorcist in that the girl in question is a high school student instead of a 12-year old, but the formula remains)
The plot beats were also similar. For example, around the third act of the movie, the veteran exorcist priest were put out of commission because of his health problem and now the young and inexperienced priest had to finish the job.
So what’s the difference? What’s the magic word for this post again? That’s right… subversion.
In The Exorcist, the exorcism ultimately failed, leading the demon to possess Father Karras; the movie ended with the priest committing suicide, seemingly a noble act but was it really? I suppose, given that the good father received his last rites. But contrast this to how Kuasa Gelap resolved the demonic possession:
The exorcism was a complete success. No asterisk.
That in itself made all the difference. But I’m not done. In addition to that simple fact, the older priest in Kuasa Gelap survived his ordeal. The story concluded with Romo Thomas now on his way to becoming a full-fledged exorcist under the guidance of his new mentor, Romo Rendra.
In The Exorcist, both priests were dead by the end of it. The girl was freed, yet in a sense, the demon had succeeded. So it was a pyrrhic victory at best.
I find this ironic because apparently The Exorcist was based on a real-life exorcism, yet that exorcism - of one Roland Doe - was a success. So where it mattered, Kuasa Gelap was actually closer to the story of Doe than The Exorcist, the novel/movie it supposedly inspired.
The problem with The Exorcist is that the movie believes in the devil, but does not believe in God. Kuasa Gelap, while acknowledging the dangerous power of the demonic2, also believes in God’s power to overcome evil.
once said that “all fiction is message fiction”. And nothing demonstrates this better than how these two movies were resolved.And that’s why I love this movie known as Kuasa Gelap. It’s not perfect by any means, but where it matters, it delivers.
Verdict:
“Romo” is the Indonesian honorific for a Catholic priest, though the word itself is actually Javanese. It’s our equivalent to “Father”.
So much so that I was scared to even look at a picture of a jelangkung for the next few days, lol