Monday, September 23, 2024

Don't Make a Scene: The Year of Living Dangerously

The Story:
A guy walks into a bar...

This is another of those "Classic Scenes" from the late Premiere Magazinethis one taken from Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously—that would take one scene  that is pivotal and script out the dialogue.

So, Billy Kwan walks into a bar and director Peter Weir photographs it from Billy's perspective—from his shoulder-height, and we're given the world from his perspective. Billy has been narrating the film and we've been made privy to his innermost thoughts. Sur,e other characters are played by actors who are top-lined, but Billy feels like the heart and soul of the movie, the character with whom the film-makers seem to want us to identify. So, when his character cracks...it's a bit of a shock. And the movie barely recovers.

But, we should have seen it coming. Billy may be the smartest guy in the room, but, he's also the least noticed. We get a sense of this at the start of the scene. Billy wanders in, still in shock from the death of the child in the family that he's been trying to help and he's looking for the usual gang of journo's that make a semi-permanent group of barflies. But, his heighth doesn't allow him to see them; he's perpetually peering through a forest of other people in his search. It shouldn't go unnoticed that he goes unnoticed as he makes his way through the crowd. He's practically invisible—which is a blessing as a photojournalist and a curse, personally.

He compensates for this internal and external world-view, by imagining himself a puppet-master—an image utilized in the film—plotting, planning, ascribing motivations gleaned from his cache of files, manipulating, becoming in his own mind his own version of Sukarno.

But, without any real-world power. When things start going South—when the relationship he's developed between Hamilton and Jill risks exposing her as an intelligence agent, and the child of the village woman he's been attempting to help dies—he becomes just another would-be tyrant clinging to the power he only thinks he has. Ironically, he's susceptible to the same disease he's been fighting against. Power corrupts. Even if it's only imagined power.

Poor Billy.
 
The Set-up: Indonesia during the final days of the Sukarno regime in 1965. A pool of journalists are covering the story, and the one who stands out is Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), a photojournalist of Chinese-Australian heritage. Billy is short of stature, physically and professionally, but he has connections in Indonesia in high places—like Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), working at the British Embassy—and low—he has great sympathy for the Indonesian people, particularly one mother and child, who are having a tough time of it and to whom he regularly provides food and aid. Billy does his research and he has file cabinets of information on them all in his bungalow. It is only when Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson), just assigned in-a-hurry for an Australian TV network to cover the Indonesia crisis, does Billy see a way to make the most of everyone's situations and he takes Hamilton under his wing. But, when Hamilton proves to be professionally callous and the woman's child dies suddenly, Billy's machinations, like, Sukarno's hold on the nation, start to unravel. And so does Billy.
 
Action.
 
INT. WAYANG BAR - NIGHT
WALLY, CONDON, and CURTIS share a meal at a side table. They are making more noise than usual, and the other customers keep their distance.
WALLY O'SULLIVAN: Billy, come over here. Been looking everywhere for you. 
BILLY KWAN:
What is all this? 
KEVIN CONDON:
Bulgarian Independence Day. 
O'SULLIVAN:
Not a crucial day in modern history, but Sukarno's coming... 
O'SULLIVAN: in a couple of hours. 
CONDON:
We think he'll use the occasion for a speech. - 
KWAN:
I'm sure he will. - 
CONDON:
Later. Right now we're celebrating. -  
KWAN:
Oh?
What are you celebrating? - 
CONDON:
Curtis got Saigon. 
KWAN:
Curtis got Saigon. 
KWAN:
Well, we must all drink to that. 
PETE CURTIS:
C'mon, Billy. Don't give me this crap tonight, huh? 
KWAN:
Wherever human misery is at its worst, the press will be there in force.
CURTIS:
Give me a break, willya?
KWAN: To Saigon!
KWAN:
You know, p
eople are out there fighting in the streets for rice. I shot some footage.
KWAN:
Does anybody want it? 
O'SULLIVAN:
It's only a temporary shortage. 
KWAN:
Why don't you tell them the true story, gentlemen? 
KWAN:
Why don't you tell them that Sukarno makes empty speeches... and builds monuments to his vanity...
KWAN:
...
while his people starve to death. 
KWAN:
Why don't you tell them that he says, "Eat rats!" 
O'SULLIVAN:
My dear Billy. You were...
O'SULLIVAN:
...the one who told us he was a great man.
KWAN:
He was!
KWAN:
He was! That's why his betrayal is so hideous.
There is a hush. CONDON looks uneasily down the bar at ALI.
CONDON:
Steady on, Billy. 
O'SULLIVAN:
I've never really agreed with you on just... 
O'SULLIVAN:
...how much the people mean to Sukarno. The only thing he wanted to do for his people was to go to bed with them. 
O'SULLIVAN:
The female ones, that is.
CURTIS:
Ha!
KWAN:
You're right. 
KWAN:
He does use his people as objects of pleasure, but so... 
KWAN:
...do you. Only you do it...
KWAN:
...with boys!
There is a stunned silence. ALI stands behind them, smiling triumphantly at this information. CURTIS grabs KWAN by the shoulders and slams him against the bar, both feet suspended from the floor like a doll.
CURTIS:
What did you say? 
CURTIS:
You little... 
URTIS:
...bastard! - 
KWAN:
Curtis!
CURTIS:
You know what you did...
CURTIS:
...to him?! You knew what that meant...
CURTIS:
...didn't you? They'll throw him out of the country! 
KWAN:
You're no better,
CURTIS: They'll throw him out of the country!
KWAN:
...you and your girls!
HAMILTON stands at the doorway.
GUY HAMILTON:
Curtis, put him down!
KWAN runs out of the bar 
and HAMILTON follows him.
HAMILTON: Billy? 
HAMILTON:
Billy?
O'SULLIVAN:
I'll have my bags packed tonight.
HAMILTON:
Billy!
HAMILTON:
I want to talk to you! 
HAMILTON:
Billy!
HAMILTON:
Billy, stop! - 
EXT. ALLEY - NIGHT
The alley is deserted. It is little more than a fissure. its only illumination coming dully from shuttered windows two and three stories up. Garbage is scattered everywhere.
KWAN is not runner. His abbreviated legs work to no avail like a kindergarten child's. HAMILTON overtakes him a blocks his way. 
HAMILTON:
Damn it!
In the half-light, they both cast grotesque shadows on the wall as they stand facing each other, trying to regain control of their breathing. 
HAMILTON:
What's the hell's the matter with you?
KWAN:
What do you want?
HAMILTON:
What was Curtis doing?
KWAN:
You made the broadcast, didn't you? - 
HAMILTON:
Now, I didn't source... 
HAMILTON:
...that back to Jill. I got that someplace else.
KWAN:
Doesn't matter. That's not the point.
HAMILTON:
Yes, it is the point. 
HAMILTON:
And when this thing breaks, it could change the whole political shape of Southeast Asia. 
HAMILTON:
How far are my loyalties to Jill supposed to go? 
KWAN:
I would have given up the world for her. 
KWAN:
You won't give up one story. 
HAMILTON:
It's not just a story, dammit. It's the bloody story. 
HAMILTON:
Can't you understand that? 
KWAN:
Don't you understand? You've lost Jill. 
HAMILTON:
What? What have you told her? You told her something? 
KWAN:
I gave her to you. I'm taking her back. 
KWAN:
Do you understand? 
HAMILTON:
You gave her to me? 
HAMILTON:
For Christ's sake. 
HAMILTON:
You mad little bastard! 
HAMILTON:
You think you can control people's lives just 'cause you got 'em in your bloody files? 
KWAN:
No.
I believed in you. I thought you were a man of light. 
KWAN:
That's why I gave you those stories you think are so important. 
KWAN:
I made you see things. I made you feel something about what you write. 
KWAN:
I gave you my trust. So did Jill. 
KWAN:
I created you.
 
 
 
Pictures by Russell Boyd and Peter Weir
 
The Year of Living Dangerously is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from M-G-M Home entertainment.


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