Position of the Stars (2010)

Directed by: Leonard Retel Helmrich | 109 minutes | documentary

The relatively unknown Dutch filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich has completed a real trilogy with ‘Stand van de Sterren’. Based on his closing film alone, you can safely conclude that it is a major achievement. A very different kind of trilogy, admittedly, than something like ‘The Lord of the Rings’, but still a true epic. The director has sacrificed more than ten years of his life to make this richly varied but intimate portrait of an Indonesian family, which is trying to survive against the background of major socio-political upheavals. It’s like a non-fictional version of Marco Tullio Giordana’s ‘La meglio gioventù’ – a six-hour epic about two brothers growing up in a turbulent Italy. ‘Position of the stars’ is no less impressive, with a focus on the personal but clearly part of the political, social and economic situation in the country and the community around them. Combined with a beautiful visual style, these ingredients make for an almost perfect documentary.

For viewers who have not seen the earlier parts, a short overview is given at the beginning of the film of the events in these films (and therefore also in Indonesia itself). The forced resignation of Suharto, the economic malaise, and of course the events in the lives of the members of the Sjamsudin family, the subject of the films. We see in the summary how Bakti converts to Islam (while his mother remains a proud Christian), because all his friends were (or became) too and he didn’t want to be different from the rest. This is nicely visually complemented by showing a church, and then, after a smart camera move, a large mosque looming behind it. Furthermore, the information that Indonesia is the third largest country in the world and contains the largest Muslim community should make the situation even more tangible for the viewer. The director often shows both faiths side by side or right after each other – for example by editing sermons one after the other. In the Sjamsudin family, the grandson of the old woman Rumidjah even quite literally comes between the two faiths. His uncle Bakti wants to raise him as a Muslim, while his grandmother quietly takes him to a Catholic church and makes him say the “Our Father”. When Bakti finds out about this, he reprimands both his mother and his little nephew, leaving the latter in complete confusion.

Things don’t run smoothly in the family, not even in Bakti’s marriage. His wife sells goods from her food stall, while he himself has a job as a “neighborhood director”, a local official who, for example, helps his fellow villagers with applying for subsidies. A funny situation arises when he applies for a subsidy for his brother, but they have to hide it in all sorts of luxuries – such as a TV and PlayStation game console, which they have bought on the credit – because otherwise they do not qualify. Hypocritical, you might think, but apparently there is so much craving for (Western) wealth that the basic necessities of life (such as good medical care or housing) are sometimes even “allowed” to come in second place. Of course it would be a different story if the family were really starving.

Financial problems also occur for Bakti and his wife, who together are not exactly fat. It also doesn’t help that Bakti spends a good part of his (free) time taking care of special Siamese fighting fish and having them fight for money. His wife is so annoyed by this attitude – and the fact that he sometimes seems to love his fish more than she does – that, in a dramatic climax, she throws the fish so dear and precious to Bakti into the skillet, with the The immediate reason for Bakti’s filling of his “aquariums” with the blessed water they had just received and which is only distributed once a year. Everything is put on edge for a moment, with Grandma Rumidjah who gets excited, but wisely keeps aloof and quietly sits down in a corner and prays (for a less irascible son).

It is important that they get their affairs in order. Not only for a happy marriage, but also, and above all for the future of granddaughter Tari, who is now a beautiful, intelligent teenager and eligible for a study at university. On her fragile shoulders rests the hope of the whole family. Rumidjah won’t beat the crap out of it. She finds herself and her son failed in life, and granddaughter Tari should break this trend. The problem is that she herself seems to find it all less important. When it turns out that her father won’t have enough money to send her to university, she finds it worst that she spent half a day for nothing taking the entrance exam. She much prefers going out with friends or playing with her computer or new mobile phone with photo function (which she got as a reward from her grandmother). In short, she is an, by Western standards, “normal” girl, who wants to be hip and have fun with boyfriends and girlfriends and is now more or less a prisoner of the expectations of her environment.

All these personal developments take place against a broader background. A background where neighbors, friends and people on the street also get enough attention from the camera (remarkable is a female beggar without arms who, walking past cars on the road for money, and then suddenly sits on the side and with her very flexible legs and feet, takes a cell phone from a pocket around her neck, dials the number with her toes and just sits down and makes a call). Even the animals are not forgotten, with some special tracking shots of a large cockroach fleeing for its life. In any case, the shots are often beautiful, in their movements, length, or compositions. Sometimes it even looks a bit too poetic or perfectly framed, clearly looking for the most creative shot where the spontaneity seems to be compromised for a while. Fortunately, Helmrich usually manages to return to the content just in time, i.e. the faces or actions of the main characters in the film.

‘Stand van de Sterren’ has a lot to offer and is so worthwhile because of its broad scope. After all, the makers would not have managed it with only beautiful images, and the same applies to the mere display of the personal worries of the family. After all, we want to see how they relate to their community and the country as a whole. When a beautiful series of scenes follows at the end of the film in which Rumidjah, back in her own village, tries to convince her friend Tumisah of the convenience of cooking on gas – instead of gathering wood yourself and making of fire – and an interesting altercation over the value of money ensues, it comes across as anything but banal, after all we’ve been through with Rumidjah and her family. As they look at the stars together, contemplating their place in it, the universality of their feelings is not to be missed, and the viewer is equally completely connected with them, thinking of this same idea, looking at the same stars.