Saat Menghadap Tuhan
Saat Menghadap Tuhan
Rudi Soedjarwo’s new film Saat Menghadap Tuhan or When Facing God is the first production of RexCorp and the very first for five newcomers led by Rafi Sudirman, Abielo Parengkuan, Denisha Wahyuni, Dede Satria, and Cindy Sebastiani which was just recently launched by RexCorp a pioneer production house.
Damar (Rafi Sudirman) in turn shapeshifts into a character with childhood trauma and anger from witnessing his father’s murder case; Gito (Abielo Parengkuan), a child the product of a broken family seeks the attention of every boy but gets bullied for her lack of interaction with the parents.
Following that, we meet Nala (Denisha Wahyuni) and Maya (Cindy Sebastiani), two women attempting to cope with domestic violence and sexual abuse in their own households, while Marlo (Dede Satria) turns into a bully because of the environment created by his father. Their respective struggles do not lie far from ordinary problems that plague the contemporary Indonesian society.
The undeclared desire of humanity to speak about sensitive issues such as sexual violence, which has been suppressed due to the fear of words like pain or trauma and even society itself, emphasises the importance of this film. Such realisation could have been induced by the experience that people tend to guard deeply sensitive issues from discussion because of, for example, sexual violence.
It is not only the audience but even the critics who, as it seems, turned to that conclusion too, Rudi Soedjarwo especially as the director of this film appears to be a very scathing critic of humanity through visual representation and this movie in particular.
For some peculiar reason watching When Facing God made me recall the 9 Dragons combined with Chasing the Sun as a writer. Rudi’s idealism at this time is what I am more impressed with even when I know he still has some notes over it but it seems to me like he has returned on track as filmmaker here.
There’s a point like the one mentioned above that Rudi did manage to throw feeble and verbal assaults when some bold issues regarding relationships in this case among families and friends building the stakes in story tension which was a weak area in dialogue making it long-winded is such moments – however, not many can master and balance the two as well.
Luckily, however, being first time actors under Rudi Soedjarwo’s direction, they didn’t perform poorly at all. But out of everyone, Rafi Sudirman shone the most of them and in fact in the whole movie I think he has played his character almost perfectly. His performance was full of feelings from the beginning to the end and I had no doubt that in time if stayed at this level of performance then one day Indonesia will have another actor of great actor and he does not have to alter much rather a little more of effort will be required.
As a conclusion, one is forced to admit that the movie Saat Menghadap Tuhan is politically motivated in that it aims for the society to openly engage in discourse on various issues violence and trauma with due understanding that such films as these would barely be followed by discussions. Instead of encouraging an actual exchange of ideas, they only act as a catalyst for disputes to individuals who are not any wiser of each other’s points of view, thus hindering any productive idea exchange.
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