Balibo (2009)

I didn't start the english version of my blog since long but from what I had up till now around here, and most certain also from the next entries of this year, this is probably the hardest film to be watched. The main reason, as the poster says, is more that it's based on real facts and less the blood & gore scenes (which aren't many). As a comparison, if you've seen "Hotel Rwanda" and you thought it was hard to grasp, it might be best to avoid "Balibo". Don't get me wrong - as a movie (historical drama) probably it deserves all the attention. Like I numerously stated on my Ro blog version I'm not usually pro real life depicting dramas (especially sick of Romanian cinema focusing on life in Ro before/after '89) and I usually want a movie to try to pull me out from the every day reality. History stuff (especially old history stuff) however it's the exception from the rule - because I usually see it as a story (without the "hi" :) prefix). In this case however it's the kind of movie that leaves you with an acute desire to make an online petition to Bill Gates in order for him to start buying weapon factories and refocus them on can production (idea for a new Microsoft branch :-p).

What's the story anyway? The film shows a glimpse of history from a little country named East Timor, which somewhere in 1975 declared its independence from the former Portuguese colony status and almost immediately came under the occupation of its neighbor - Indonesia. Obviously, like the poster suggests, the whole story was not exactly peaceful (and as it seems also the years that followed), going on under the tacit acceptance of other neighboring countries, and especially of the Australian Government. I'm not going to discuss anymore the subject from the political point of view because I just don't do that and this is a movie blog. The action is centered on six Australian journalists caught up in events. More specifically it follows the steps of the last of them who came to East Timor to learn something about the fate of the first five. What fate ... see the movie ...

The film advances simultaneously on two plans - one plan is the route of the sixth journalist in search of others before him, following the path through the same specific places, points where the other plan comes up with flashbacks of the first group. The film is excellent work from that point of view. It's hard to describe the feeling created ... but the idea is that it's probably as successful as it intends to be. It doesn't serve you the ending immediately on a platter. Instead, as I said, it goes step by step along with the investigation thread, which you can't actually say that it gets explicitly worse as long as it's advancing regarding the fate of those involved. But somehow, after a while (not too long), even if you know nothing about the real facts, you will get the feeling that something is going to get really ugly in the end. And this feeling grows until it reaches its maximum in the final point (or rather points because we have two) - climax that ultimately leads to a kind of repulsion, connected with the "can factory" idea mentioned at the beginning ... :) ...

I don't think I should say anything more about the directing part - that's behind everything I've tried to explain above. It's not a movie intended to make you feel good and it succeeds. Technically, the editing contributes greatly to that, namely through the tension created (you can only think as an example to the flashbacks about the first journalist group, and the way these are integrated, having relatively long durations compared to the usual technique for this stuff). Even the cinematography gets some points for the feeling created by the movie - it's one of the cases where shaky cam (or kinetic to name it "scientifically correct") is used without exaggerating and at the moments it should be. On the soundtrack we have Lisa Gerrard ("Gladiator," "Man on Fire", etc.) who I thought up till now only providing the voice part in movies, but it seems that she also works as a composer (and it doesn't sound bad). All these being said, I can mention also a weakness, namely a few cliche/cheesy lines in the script accompanied by some overacting, but this doesn't happen very often and gets lost among the rest.

Conclusion - better than my general opinion vis-à-vis the Australian cinema, despite a budget that doesn't seem very high ; recommended to see if you don't dislike historical dramas or you're just in the mood to add something to enrich your general knowledge about that part of the world ; clearly to be avoided if you want a comedy for dinner ... :)

Rating: 4 out of 5