Saturday, August 20, 2011

The Year of Living Dangerously - 1982

I so loved how Linda Hunt narrated this film. Her Academy Award Oscar was so worthy. This is a timely film for what is going on today with journalists globally. Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver give fabulous performances as well. I loved how Linda Hunt kept a file on the people that crossed her path...fascinating.

The Year of Living Dangerously is a 1982 Peter Weir film adapted from the novel The Year of Living Dangerously by the author Christopher Koch. The story is about a love affair set in Indonesia during the overthrow of President Sukarno. It follows a group of foreign correspondents in Jakarta on the eve of an attempted coup by the so-called 30 September Movement in 1965.

The film stars Mel Gibson as Guy Hamilton, an Australian journalist, and Sigourney Weaver as Jill Bryant, a British Embassy officer. It also stars Linda Hunt as the male dwarf Billy Kwan, Gibson's local photographer contact, a role for which Hunt won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.[1] The film was shot in both Australia and the Philippines and includes Australian actors Bill Kerr as Colonel Henderson and Noel Ferrier as Wally O'Sullivan.

It was banned from being shown in Indonesia until 1999. The title The Year of Living Dangerously is a quote which refers to a famous Italian phrase used by Sukarno; vivere pericolosamente, meaning "living dangerously". Sukarno borrowed the line for the title of his Indonesian Independence Day speech of 1964.

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