Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? 2: Breathing is Quite Optional

By: Andre Suprapto

A great love story must involve depth, and when we are talking about depth; breathing is out of the question, or at least optional.

Indeed, the second installment of the movie franchise that symbolized the artistic rebirth of my generation’s post reformation era has established Riri Riza as a director who is in the business of taking his audiences’ breath away.

It’s truly a sequel that does not disappoint. A triumph, a grand visual and audio feast that gracefully make their way to the heart.

The ability of movies to paint human story through pictures, acting, and music surpass other medium of art due to its holistic approach.

I highly regard and appreciate those who have the guts to devote their lives in the movie industry. I never have the courage to write bad reviews on bad movies. I only write reviews on movies with superlative quality because I feel indebted to the makers of the art not to add another words of praise.

One word regarding Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? 2 (AADC 2) that you can always find from mass media, or social media comments on Facebook, Instagram, Path or Youtube is “baper – kebawa perasaan” (carried away with feelings).

In my view, the cause of this baper syndrome that AADC 2 infects on its viewers with perhaps more than 90% “killing rate” are the movie’s three strong features: language, cinematography and music, and the overwhelming chemistry between the two lead characters.

I perhaps am one of the few theists in the world who deeply believe that the first thing that the Almighty created in His 6 days creation career was not ‘light’; it was ‘language’. Otherwise, how did He say, “Let there be light”, if at the time language has not yet been created?

The wealth of language owed to the brilliant script by Mira Lesmana and Prima Rusdi created a fluid, realistic and smart dialogues that are funny and relatable that do not deviate from the overall artsy and deep themed franchise. The artsy and deep theme was anchored on the calm and riotous poems by the poet M Aan Mansyur that gives more firepower on the strength of the Rangga character.

When the first Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (AADC 1) was out in 2002, it symbolized the break of the Indonesian language (literature) from the chain of the militaristic fascist regime of Suharto.

Under the 32 years (which is a very long time) Suharto regime, language is directed from the top in order to limit people’s thought. The ubiquitous and smiling Big Brother only gave his imprimatur on anything that involves “pembangunan” (development) or “ketertiban” (order). Everything outside those ‘safe’ concepts is “communistic” or “subversive”, just like the accusation against Rangga’s idealistic father in AADC 1.

The poetry in AADC 1 resembles a solitary voice “crying in the wilderness” which call for a revolt. For the generation that witnessed Suharto’s fall as a Junior High School student, and saw the rise of Megawati as the country’s first female president in High School; the words “pecahkan saja gelasnya biar ramai” (just break the glass to make great noise) are proverbial.

As teenagers we may not take much attention to the poem’s depth, but as we mature with age and experience, we understand now that Rangga was actually uttering a cry to revolt against the silence and conformist mentality imposed on us by our previous master, and to answer the call of the “Reformasi” with action, for example by “goyangkan saja loncengnya biar terdera” (just swing the bell until it winces).

Even though Rangga fell short of his own idealism or poetry by ending the first movie with seducing a confused girl, made her fall in love with him madly, and leave things hanging by going abroad; however, the unfinished plot successfully adds up to the viewers’ curiosity to buy tickets to see the sequel after 14 freaking years.

That curiosity coupled with the combination of charming cinematography, music and the ingenuous choice of Yogyakarta as the main spot of the Rangga and Cinta saga; are responsible for creating the majestic ambiance of the movie.

The good God created Dian Sastrowardoyo’s (Dian) ageless beauty, and Riri Riza was the artist who absolutely knew how to use that beauty to create enchanting dramatic scenes. When you see how the light of the sunrise falls on Dian’s immaculate face and how it was gracefully projected on the screen, you know that the director of the movie must be a wizard with a camera.

And, when those marvelous scenes were imbued with music by the amazing collaboration of Melly Goeslaw and Anton Hoed; it just makes you want to be a part of that story, or at least go see the movie for a second time, like yours truly.

Thirdly and lastly, we all have to agree that Nicholas Saputra (Nicholas) and Dian were born to be Rangga and Cinta.

For me, they continue the tradition of perfect couples in film whose predecessors include: Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone with The Wind, Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in Reds, and Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver in The Year of Living Dangerously.

They just click with each other: physically, characteristically, and mentally. They fill each other’s lack, and enrich each other’s strength.

Dian was a joy to behold for sure. She managed to stay true to her Cinta character and to make the finely-tuned improvisation on that character given that 14 years have lapsed after we last saw her on that fateful airport scene, and the bitter experiences (the break up with Rangga and the death of Alya) that she had to endure during that long interval.

Cinta is still full of live but pensive at the same time. She is our Audrey Hepburn, a beauty with a sense of irony and mystery that never fails to ravish the heart. Her love of art/ poetry, her spontaneity and her fetish for surprises, and of course that smile, that lethal smile; are the magnet that always draw us to her. Her presence in the scenes demands attention and infatuation that linger long after one leaves the theater.

Yet, I have to agree with the review of a Malaysian fan of AADC 2 that the movie should have been entitled Ada Apa Dengan Rangga?

Because, when Dian’s performance demands attention, Nicholas demands respect.

The plot of the movie began to be interesting when we first saw Nicholas’ insomniac, thoughtful, and murky face in his career defining performance; haunting the streets of New York City at dawn, with a camera in his hands, and a large dose of poetry in his head. Indeed, his dismal face juxtaposed against a cold, callous and vicious NYC skyline is a fine work of art by itself.

Rangga made sadness looks insanely cool. He walks and does his life in the understanding that he and the world are not best friends. He roams the world as a mighty Byronic hero: “lone, wild and strange”, as well as “proud, moody and cynical”.

Hell is the suffering of being unable to love said Dostoyevsky, and Rangga was living such hell in NYC. This can be seen by that look in his face which perfectly portrays a frustrated “man of sorrows and who is acquainted with grief”.

Before he decided to go back to Indonesia, we can see him as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a mere dreamer in life who seems to be living entirely in his own mind. Reality is incidental for him. People like this cannot juggle things. He lives in the extremes, an either/or world. There is no middle ground.

For Hamlet, it’s either vengeance or Ophelia’s love; he cannot have both. For Rangga, it’s either he can give perfect happiness to Cinta, or he leads a life of struggle and perishes on his own.

And by coming back to Indonesia and trying to win Cinta back, he reestablishes love as a great creative agent that breaks boundaries and pride, and inspires heroism and romanticism. A man is always at his best in two events: when he is in love, and when he is in revolt; and in AADC 2, Rangga is up to those two ventures i.e. to win his love by a revolt.

In AADC 1 Rangga resembled a wild artist and a spiritual wonderer of the Reformation era. As he has gone through his trial of fire in AADC 2, the mature Rangga represents a towering contemplative man of action, an idealist renegade who is “A Hero of Our Time” of this Restoration age.

The view from Bukit Rhema

 

The alchemist Riri Riza then gave us his deadly baper potion when he created the scene of Rangga and Cinta first encounter at GreenHost Hotel in Yogyakarta. When Rangga’s irresistible gravitas met Cinta again for the first time after 9 years with her killer middle parted front bangs, my God; it is just “the stuff that dreams are made of”. It was baper all around, full-blown baper ecstasy, baperisme at its best.

The movie breaks the orthodoxy in romantic drama genre that dictates that love only belongs to youth, and that in your thirties you do not fall in love, you have affair(s) instead. Cinta is always Rangga’s and vice versa. Cinta did not have an affair in Yogyakarta, she just had a reconciliation.

In the end, I think AADC 2 excites us mostly because it is an invitation to fall in love.

Especially for those who are lucky enough to experience a grand love and lost it, AADC 2 reminds us that in that case, moving on is a very dangerous business.