Balibo
Anthony LaPaglia in the excellent Balibo
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By Matthew Champion. |  |
Thursday, 15, Oct 2009 05:14
Showing at the London Film Festival on October 20th (18:15), October 21st (15:45) and October 22nd (13:45)
General release not yet confirmed.
By Lewis Bazley.
The hours after a viewing of Balibo pass like a hazy out-of-body experience, so dazed and exhausted are you by the weight of what you've just seen and learnt. Yet this Australian production isn't a gory horror or polemical documentary, but a controlled and intense thriller, given extra emotional punch through its real-life grounding.
Based on the 2001 book Cover-Up by Jill Jolliffe, Balibo - the small East Timor border town around which the film hangs - dramatises the shocking tale of the Indonesian invasion of the miniscule nation in 1975. In the best performance of his career, Anthony LaPaglia stars as world-wearing investigative hack Roger East, urged to showcase the plight of East Timor when five Australian journalists are killed while attempting to document the forthcoming Indonesian incursion.
What follows is a gripping and human account of immense bravery and the consequences of turning a blind eye.
A preface scene sees an interviewee thanked for her "unique and very important" testimony while East is later urged by the young José Ramos-Horta (Oscar Isaac) that he "must not forget". Though the script is undeniably guilty of hammering home the political significance of the plot, and an overwrought climax almost derails the preceding magnificence, Balibo remains a profound and troubling film.
Director Robert Connolly does a superb job of slowly teasing out the truth hidden in the wreckage of the theft of a country. Rarely does he resort to melodrama and the tragedy of the Balibo Five is skilfully presented alongside East's courageous search for the truth. LaPaglia is compelling in an increasingly furious role while Damon Gameau impresses as young news reporter Greg Shackleton.
Criminally, Balibo might struggle to find an audience due to the lack of concern for or knowledge of the history of East Timor. To miss the film out of ignorance would be to repeat the same Western-centric behaviour that allowed the atrocities detailed in the film to go unchecked.
Ignore this film at your peril. When the dust has settled and your heart has slowed after 111 mins of gruelling action and emotion, your mind will be enriched after viewing a film that's both a first-class political thriller and a haunting reminder of our shared responsibilities within a global society.