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hendar2001
Reviews
12 and Holding (2005)
An intertwined stories of Jacob, Malee & Leonard, trying to deal with their teen-age problems
'The "someday"-ness of growing up' It is not always easy to live in transitional phase from teenager into adulthood.
It often happens that, instead of being understood, and cared for, and be listened to, teenagers are reproached for intruding into the very lives of adults,which means: responsibility to deal with dilemma, to tackle our emotions with cold-headed attitude (though largely we, as adults, fail to do so), and to give examples to our children.
These three intertwined stories of Jacob, Malee & Leonard are three extra ordinary narratives of being a precocious child jumping through the fence of "age difference" Jacob (Conor Donovan), in his painful memory of losing his brother, Rudy (played by the same actor Conor Donovan), and bereft by his parents' (played by Linus Roache and Jayne Atkinson) seemingly favored the absent child, puts up with difficult question of forgiving his brother's murderers (claiming this to be "an accident") or having a retaliation to stand up for what he thinks would recover his parent's due love for him.
Malee (Zoe Weizenbaum), in her matured sexuality, is trying to cope up with pangs of loneliness inherited from her mother's fragmented view of family's breakdown, and finally met with a possible answer from older guy named Gus (Jeremy Renner), one of her mother's therapy client.
Leonard (Jesse Camacho), dealing with her overweight problem and the loss of confidence, pushes to put diet on his family's main concern and agenda.
Who would dare to think that each child, in their own unique, not-yet-matured way, is ready to plunge into the world's of adult's usual problems and offer to solve their own solutions? Peeling through the layers of emblematic and intertwined resolutions, we come to grasp how children come to grips with differences, discriminatory acts, unspoken intentions and coated responsibilities.
And sometimes it's surprising to watch them play the ball and say the things we, adults, rarely speak due to our fear of being labelled "Childish" This film has deeply affected me in ways that adults, parents, teachers, coaches, would never teach, that is, "the someday"-ness of growing up is close at hand, and the "you'll understand it when you grow up" is just a passing cliché rarely heard by our future generation.
Who would've thought that adulthood, maturity, old age, family problems, tragic events, sense of a loss and loneliness, are logico-tractatus problematicus for unpredictable actions executed by our children? By the end of the film, we can guess not only that the end of innocence is just only the beginning, but rather how the fabric of our adult complex lives are creeping slowly into the spotless mind of our youngsters without our noticing ...
Black Gold (2006)
Black Gold offers a penetrating look into the unbalanced struggling between poor coffee farmers in Ethiopia and greedy multinational coffee companies to do "fair trade."
I saw Black Gold last night in JIFFEST (Jakarta International Film Festival). It attracted me in 2 ways i couldn't predict before. First, it invited me to think of the source of what seems familiar to me, namely, the cup of coffee sold by one of those MNC's listed in the film. Second, it just struck me (dumbfoundedly) at how fair trade is not an abstract issue discussed within the air conditioned walls and have no impact whatsoever with my life and other poor farmers in Ethiopia.
I just kept guessing, whether this film could be watched by coffee drinkers here in Indonesia, and whether, with sufficient guidance by experts in coffee production and trading, they would come to a higher level of awareness to stir consumers' action to protect their own country's coffee farmers from the cruel mechanism of unfair trade in such a global scale.
I enthusiastically recommend this film 9 out of 10!