Identity

There are some films that are hard to classify, because they are made up of elements which, at first, seem heterogeneous. They create, therefore, a strange sense of discomfort in the spectator who would like to be given a clear definition of what he sees onscreen, but instead struggles to place this film in a clear-cut category. Identity is certainly one of these films: anchored in a solid and noble Indonesian tradition of socially engaged cinema, which, mainly through the use of metaphor, comment bitterly on the problems of the society and the politics of the archipelago, Aria Kusumadewa’s film deals with grotesque but almost comic themes, if not actual atrocity. This combination can probably be justified, as the film attempts to bring together social engagement with the desire to make the film accessible to the widest possible audience. Not surprising, since among the producers of Identity is one Deddy Mizwar, who was also responsible for the comedy Naga Bonar (Jadi) 2, the most successful Indonesian film three years ago.
However, it is difficult not to gloss over the rather unattractive nature of the elements in play in Identity: the protagonist, Adam (the only living character with a name which we see in the film - coincidentally, his name is that of the “first man”) lives in a poor neighbourhood near a cemetery, where, due to redevelopment plans which envisages the building of a new and modern religious building, inhabitants are facing the threat of eviction. Adam cleans corpses in the mortuary for a living and collects the identification tags that are tied to the big toes of the dead. The hospital where he works resembles a circle of hell, a bewildering but salacious landscape of degradation and humiliation that Aria Kusumadewa shows us for the first time in a long, slow sequence of pristine directorial virtuosity: disfigured patients transformed into mummies and others who have had a foot amputated instead of having their appendix removed.
Nurses are not available for their patients, but miraculously so for the head physician. The loudspeaker system broadcasts a message for a delivery van parked on the emergency lane to be removed. Vultures prey on bereaved families to sell them funeral parlour “packages”. A madam is trying to recruit new prostitutes among the women struggling to cover the medical fees of family members… And this is how the female protagonist of the film, a nameless Chinese-Indonesian girl, whom by the end Adam baptises Hawa (Eve) when her tragic destiny unravels, has probably ended up in this circle: dispossessed and homeless, she looks after her father who is ill with a mysterious and incurable disease. The only way she can pay for the prescriptions is to sell her body. The two ill-fated people meet one evening, when he finds the young woman asleep on a bench opposite the entrance to the morgue. He invites her to sleep inside because it is air-conditioned; she accepts because the living scare her more than the dead…
With cutting remarks aimed at politics and the media for satirical effect, Identity is piercing like a high-pitched alarm, denouncing the living conditions in Indonesia of the millions who live in absolute poverty and at the mercy of the powerful. They are nameless, without identity (and not only metaphorically, as many individuals are without identification documents, either because they have lost them or because they have never been registered in the first place), without rights. It is entirely possible that only the scraps of paper that are left to prove their existence, their sojourn on this planet, are the little slips of card with their names on that Adam conserves devotedly.
Identity won four well-deserved prizes at the Citra Awards (the Indonesian Oscars) for Best Artistic Direction, Best Actor, for Tio Pakusadewo’s memorable performance (he is also responsible for the music in the film, as was the case in Quickie Express and The Forbidden Door, as the Udine audience may remember), Best Director and Best Indonesian Film of 2009.