DIRECTED BY: Peter Weir
WRITTEN BY: C.J. Koch (novel and screenplay)
MEL GIBSON AS: Guy Hamilton
GENRE: Drama, Romance, War
TAGLINES:
- A love caught in the fire of revolution.
PLOT SUMMARY:
Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) is a journalist on his first job as a foreign correspondent. His apparently humdrum assignment to Indonesia soon turns hot as President Sukarno electrifies the populace and frightens foreign powers. Guy soon is the hottest reporter on the story with the help of his photographer, half- Chinese dwarf Billy Kwan, who has gone native. Guy’s affair with diplomat Jill Bryant also helps. Eventually Guy must face some major moral choices and the relationship between Billy and him reaches a crisis at the same time the politics of Indonesia does. –IMDB
RELEASE DATES:
1982 December 9 (Australia)
1983 January 21 (United States)
1983 January 27 (Argentina)
1983 April 15 (Italy)
1983 May 20 (Sweden)
1983 May 27 (Finland)
1983 May 27 (West Germany)
1983 June 1 (France)
1983 June 2 (Netherlands)
1984 February 16 (Hong Kong)
1984 July 14 (Japan)
1999 April 27 (Singapore re-release)
2000 November 8 (Indonesia Jakarta International Film Festival)
TRIVIA:
- Banned by former dictator Suharto for its graphic depiction of his tumultuous and bloody rise to power in the 1960s, the film was finally screened in Indonesia on 6 November 2000, two years after he was forced from office after 32 years of autocratic rule.
- Much of the non-English dialogue in the film is in Filipino, not Javanese. For example, when Billy visits the home of a dead child in a slum area, the prayer spoken by the old man is in fact “Our Father” in Tagalog.
- Linda Hunt is the only actress ever to win an academy award playing a man, no cross dressing or gender confusion involved. Hilary Swank received the award for playing a biological femaile who identifies as a man in Boys Don’t Cry (1999). Gwyneth Paltrow received one playing a woman who was pretending to be a male actor in Shakespeare in Love (1998).
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