Description
Masterful Indonesian director Garin Nugroho’s gorgeous, otherworldly epic, Opera Jawa, updates an ancient Sanskrit love triangle among spoiled royals—reimagined here as married pottery artisans Siti and Setio and village fat cat Ludiro—Nugroho has fashioned an all-singing, all-dancing morality play that pits cultural tradition and marital fidelity against radical uprising and erotic freedom. When Setio embarks on a long journey away from home, Siti’s fidelity is tested by the fiery writhings of Ludiro (a scene-stealing Eko Supriyanto). Nugroho envisions this romantic intrigue through a heady yet sensual mélange of haunting gamelan melodies, acrobatic choreography and Javanese shadow puppetry. Nugroho is a wildly ambitious conceptual artist with a flair for cinematic excess, filling the screen with razzle-dazzle imagery—hundreds of candlelit masks, a maze of coconut shells, a beating heart wrenched from its lovelorn body—yet always attuned to the tragedy of his timeless tale.
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