Cin(T)a, Indonesia.

I know it's a long pause since my last post--in which I promised to write a philosophical review for the movie Cin(T)a. Well, now that it's happened, enjoy:

Indonesia is not a monotheistic nation, nor it is an Islamic nation (as many foreigner perceived it to be). Indonesia is a multi-religion, multi-theistic nation. Indonesia is a Pancasila country, a principle that considers as its first testament the belief in oneness of God, so that all religions achieve in equal footing. The funny side is that Indonesia allowed their citizens only to held one of the 'official' 5 religions: Islam, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Buddhism, and Hindu--this restriction for religion numbers allowed in the country was a ridiculous law, and nobody sure why it was created the first time. Cin(T)a movie picked up this theme, and played the concept around it.

As a modern movie, Cin(T)a falls into what other Indonesian movies fall for: westernization. Well, it's not a bad thing though; in fact it had been prophesized since the earliest time of Indonesia's origin. The most astounding prophecy came from famous philologist/anthropologist Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana who sees that Dutch colonization over Indonesia would--over time--brought a new dawn to the whole society and culture. STA even segregate Indonesia into two categories: the Indonesia and pre-Indonesia.

 

Indonesia	Pre-Indonesia
Westernized	Traditional
Dynamic	Static
Free to change	Chained (terikat) by tradition
United	Divided

 

If we sees what constitutes the Indonesia and Pre-Indonesia, we could see the movie Cin(T)a better, for it is undoubtedly tackling on the process (and the pain of) a nation in moving. Indonesia--right now--is on an enormous time of transformations, moving from the old paradigm to the new one. What the movie says is that if we want to travel ahead to the Indonesia prophesized by STA and all those great thinkers of the past, we should liberate the inanity of the old times. Sadly, many people see religion, politics, race and gender problems as separate entities and belong to different dimensions, while evidently they're not. They're one and all in Indonesia's cultural and social problem. Talking bout Indonesian culture, we got to map out our memories back to '30s: by the middle of the 1930s, the Indonesian literary personality and philosopher, Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, instigated a debate that was to be known as ‘the polemics on culture.’ For him, there had not been anything to be called ‘Indonesian culture’ in the earlier history of the Archipelago (or Nusantara). In the pre-Indonesia period, the peoples of the Archipelago never had a unified political and cultural identity. In other words, Indonesian culture was something of the future rather than of the past. Moreover, for him, if the Indonesian culture was based on the past, it would create problems. One of the problems was that each group would try to dominate the national culture.

And so, the debate over 'Indonesia culture' had never ended ever since: what it is, what it was, and what it would become. In the early '40s, a group of educated scholar led by Ki Hadjar Dewantara tried to engage in the debate through the involvement of mass education. What they wanted was to offer an alternative model of education in which intellectualism was combined with loftier feeling and strong moral commitment. Likewise, they opposed individualism and egoism not in order to eradicate one’s feeling of dignity, but to cultivate a strong personality ready to sacrifice oneself for the good of the people. Only through this type of education, he said, could one produce students who were proud of their own culture and ready to dedicate themselves in the struggle for independence. This pioneering come to fruition in post-Independence era, when a bunch of intellectuals, artists and orators called 'Generation 1945' arise, rocketing such names as Chairil Anwar, Asrul Sani, or Rifai Apin to national famous. Therefore, unlike Alisjahbana or Ki Hadjar, The 1945 generation pushing the culture forward without apparent classifications of who should get revolutionized, and who shouldn’t. They now declared the universalism of culture without distinguishing the West from the East, they even put it in a document titled Surat Kepercayaan Gelanggang in 1950:

 

“We are the true inheritors of the world culture, and we shall develop this culture in our own way...

We do not bind anything with the Indonesian culture...

Revolution for us is putting new values on outdated values that have to be left behind. We are of the opinion that revolution in our country is not finished yet."

 

This spirit, this philosophy is what moves the nation forward, until came the stumbling block of New Order regime (led by ex-president Soeharto), that put all those development and progress backward. It's true that during the Soeharto regime, Indonesia is known as one of the development leader in Asia--particularly in economic growth. And it's also true that The Suharto family was directly involved in many of the enterprises that contributed to the tremendous expansion of the Indonesian economy – and benefited handsomely from them. In one or more sector, Indonesia seems well and healthy, but beneath it was dark and bloody secret of a nation. The uncover of truth behind Soeharto's centralized regime brought a disruption to the whole country, politically, economically, socially and culturally. After successfully toppled Soeharto's regime, the Indonesian people began to reclaiming what once theirs: the right to voicing opinion. Many political parties and civil alliance formed after the full-scale ground-breaking riot in 1998: something that was strictly forbidden during Soeharto's regime. These parties, these alliances are fortified themselves with many ideologies, many beliefs and one of the most prominent is religion. The most devastating fact was that these alliances and parties are not seeking for one goal in the name of Indonesia, they went separate way. They don't seek cooperation: they want competition. This is what moves the nation backward. Away from the dream of past thinkers like Sutan Takdir, Chairil Anwar, or ex-President Soekarno. This idea of separation and segregation is approaching more of ‘Pre-Indonesia’ notion prophesized by STA. And this problem is presented beautifully in the movie Cin(T)a. The unhealthy social dynamics of Indonesia was rendered just correctly into a coherent movie narrative: of how religion, race and culture are upsetting interpersonal relationship among society. The two main characters in the movie: Cina and Annisa, brilliantly illustrate the analogy of majority and minority class in Indonesia. Annisa is a Javanese-Muslim, a majority in Indonesian, while Cina is a Chinese-Catholic, the symbol of stigmatized minority of Indonesian people. The sense of mistrust and seclusion in regard to their special affiliation emerged not only from their own mindset, but also from the macroscopic societal life specifically their own nation.

In one of the unforgettable scene in the movie, Annisa and Cina watched together the television news about the bombings on Christmas Eve in many churches throughout Indonesia. The silence that fell along the scene gave a reflective pause for the audience, as if interrogating us, inquiring us: "who is to blame?"
The Muslims? The radical Christians? The militant separatists? The political activists?
No. I think there's no one to blame. Enough with all the blaming in this country. No special fragment in our society need to be avoided or slaughtered again. If only we could see that there's only us facing the mirror. When we looked into it, only our faces stare back at us. There's no one else. We're fully responsible for what we've done. God won’t save us, unless we save ourselves first. Just like what portrayed in the movie: the killing can’t be undone, we can’t resurrect the dead. The best we can do is to accept it and keep moving forward. I think the whole movie tried to send us that message. Though Annisa and Cina meet the bitter end, but they keep going with their own lives. And one significance that I could remember from the movie is that in the end, no matter what religion you believe in, what God you worship, what races you represent, what language you speak, the most important is this: LIFE GOES ON. Don’t sweat yourself over small stuff like text in the Bible, the blabbering about God, hair or skin colors, because while you busy yourself with scrutinizing the details, you forget that all around you the earth keep on rotating, the changes keep on happening. And what once you perceived as absolute truth, can sometimes collapse into irrelevant details. What once was a dead end, at other time can be a wide, open door for you to enter, freely…

 

"A change should also take place in the religious identities which have been often just as dividing and just as strongly antagonistic in social and cultural life as national identities have been. Viewed from the present background of the universality of the truth of scientific knowledge, religious beliefs and faiths with their rigid dogmas and rituals show an embarrassing backwardness and narrowness of concept and ideas."

~ Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, A Dynamic Anthropology in a Decisive Epoch