I went to see the kecak dance the other night here in Bali. It's a famous indigenous phenomenon wherein a circle of bare-chested Balinese men percussively chant "cak" while waving their hands in the air (think "spirit fingers") while various male and female dancers move around the circle in costume, all of which collectively somehow depicts a battle from the Ramayama. I had high expectations and for the most part I was a bit disappointed, as the most memorable moment was one of the chanters blatantly flirting with a 19 year old Swiss girl from our tour. I had first seen the dance depicted quite beautifully in the non-narrative film Baraka and while reading up on the film found out to my consternation that the dance is not the mystical ritual it appears to be, but rather a piece of performance art designed for tourist consumption. It makes a certain amount of sense, however, one further reminder that my experiences in SE Asia have been filtered through the massive cultural melting pot contained within the films I have seen depicting the region.
The old adage is that art imitates life, but for me, often life imitates movies. It all started when I saw Apocalypse Now when I was 9 years old, which while shot in The Phillipines created an indelible image of Vietnam the light and space of which really put the zap on my head, full of palm trees and beaches and the burning stench of napalm. I first heard about Indonesia when I saw The Year Of Living Dangerously, which depicts the period of turmoil during Sukarno's fall through the eyes of an Australian journalist. Shanghai came to life for me in Empire of the Sun, Cambodia predictably through The Killing Fields and Angkor Wat via the haunting montage that closes Wong Kar-Wai's In The Mood For Love. Aside from the kecak dance, Baraka contains many exquisite images of Prambanan and Borobudur and rice paddies in Indonesia, Angkor Wat and a stream of urban metropolises including Jakarta and Hong Kong. I've seen Hong Kong in stacks and stacks of HK horror and action flicks from the mid-90s during the Category III renaissance before control reverted to mainland China at the end of the century. Hong Kong is my last stop in about 5 days, we'll see if it lives up to the movies!
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