Many times we try to defy the loss of innocence and the deformation of our childhood dreams or so called happiness from embodying that mundane greedy soulless molds of adult Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once warned us about in "Little Prince". During the course of our lives to adulthood we caught up in taking for granted small moments whose implications and upon which decisions we made yet were not fully comprehend at the time, afflicted with the kind of cool grownup we'd imagined as a child. We are compromised in so many level. We learn that we easily stranded in that catch of responsibilities, work ethic, money versus love, dreams, happiness etc. And we blamed on what we watch and read and listen or in that matter lack of, during our childhood.
By all means history repeats by itself, we now try to protect what's left of innocence of our children and their magnanimous beliefs for their dreams from the scaring world. Now that the end of school holiday morphing into a cultural rite of passage for family bonding, parents taking on leave vacation to start paying attention on what their kids have been watching and should have been all year and tweens gleefully streaming the malls for shopping spree or being autistic, gathering like a flock to tweet or update their FB status from their crayoned colored BBs and even old fashionably strapping themselves in front of the magic black box all day building reality over drama queen reality shows and sensational infotainments. I was the product of latter imbalanced media fetishism for violence and romance without much space for children's movies, and not to mention my parents lack of inhibition on media filtering and big sister's raging hormones mostly can be held responsible for taking me out to watch Pretty Woman and Ghost as my first family movies. Of course after that I redeemed it with series of Macalauy Culkin's tutti frutti flicks like Home Alone and My Girl among my most favorites and tried to wash away what Demi Moore and Patrick Sawyze doing during pot molding with monstrous dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. None of local children's film I could relate or even remember being made in my generation as the industry went hiatus in the 90s. I was too old by the time Petualangan Sherina came out and it took almost another decade for the same producer to release Laskar Pelangi. And in interval only few films actually showed decent encouraging and edifying story line unspoiled by Ratapan Anak Tiri plot or some money churning vehicle to exploit some child stars.
So it was no wonder that recently that itch, that gap in our development as an adult and the missing link of our childhood entertainment can be temporarily reconciled in Goelali Children's Film Festival and this holiday season's Garuda di Dadaku and King showing hopeful trend to revive the genre.
Despite my misfortune to only manage to watch a very disturbing commodified Bollywood cartoon of The Return of Hanuman (Hanuman is the show off Indian Superman whose songs can be your next RBT if you just follow the one liner ad at the panorama) in the festival and starting to doubt the curatorship and sparse agendas, Goelali is becoming a very omnipotent platform for kids to get various alternative channels to the great invention called movies from around the globe.
And after watching Garuda di Dadaku, we have the sense of urgency to be belittled of having an excuse to giving up our dreams and at the same time enjoy the cathartic quality these kids emitting through their carefree performances in the desert of acting world dominated by dramatic bulging eyes and tremendous fake extravagance. Bayu, the cute talented hero is ambitiously idealistic to becoming the best football player. With his mushroom hair, sun baked face, skinny dirty legs and genuine humble smile, he represents some groundings in imaging Indonesian kids on screen. His sense of realism mostly throttled by his single parent working mom and his overbearing grandfather that equalizes success with anything but being an athlete and specifically prohibits him from playing football due to traumatized by his failed football player son. Like most kids these days, he gets shepherded around from one intensive course to another that left fun nor talent nor interest alignment out of the loaded standardized curriculum that about to produce children of corn. If that's not harsh enough to budge him from joining the U13 national team, his family is too poor to submit him to such luxury of Arsenal soccer school that seems to be the only way to get in the national team and in tradition of Siti Nurbaya, he is forced if not deluded to follow his grandparent high demands. But in the world of cinema, nothing's better than an excessively wealthy and challenged sidekicks for support. Heri, his best friend slash manager is a typical lonely privileged kid in a wheelchair that can buy his dreams for others but not really have it. In this case, he is the philanthropist for his friends' education. Together they roam secretly through the jam packed Jakarta for a field to practice for the selection that not yet turned into urban landscapes of malls and fancy apartments only to find the right place is an abandoned cemetery plot running by Zahra, an odd artsy girl with umbrella entering the scene with one of most thrilling action in the movie. Like a prequel to the Breakfast Club, these three find their way to become the jock, the manager, and the artist.
Directed by Ifa Afansyah to bring up the comical struggles yet easily underdeveloped and lack of depth due to digging what's left from bubble gum script writing by Salman Aristo; Bayu is striving for his dream against the failing grades, the typical competition with bullying kids and adult authorities that try to shape him respectively with common shortcomings like the loving yet poor parent (Maudy Kusnaidi), the rich yet busy parent, one joker driver that is more of a parent than the real ones (Ramzi), the perfect clean coach (Ari Sihasale), and lousy authorizing grandparent (Ikrarnegara) from the world of New Order who claims to know what best for his family and uses all his pension money from his past career in national oil company for his grandson's art course instead of saving for college, and finally a dramatic heart attack (which scared shitless of a kid asking her mom, is he dead?).
Meanwhile, it is a false start to think of Garuda as more trying to jack up the diminishing prestige of our sports world and patriotism less than an ironic background which works better in Iran because of its uber restrictive policy in film making that makes innocent children's film flourishes. The catchy theme song "Garuda di Dadaku" by alternative band Netral really boosted that disjointing sense of pride and sportsmanship against the unparalleled world of our real catastrophic hooliganistic national football not to mention the scattered patriotism that only arouse when outside threats coming to out borders. It is merely using football as an effective mean to an end of fighting for your dreams no matter impossible it is.
And it is not the first time Ifa playing the wild card of childhood dream and football craze, something that most Indonesian can relate to. His previous short film about how Acehnese boy copes with the trauma of tsunami through his fascination for the World Cup staples his ability to extract what producer Shanty Hermayn reflects as the impressive side of each character and less compromised by glaring product placements and Hollywood like narrative in Garuda. Yet common slapsticks trap in Indonesian comedy by overwhelmingly exploiting the lovable Bang Dulleh, Heri's driver actually glues up with these trio precocious idiosyncratic kids sparks a dynamo to keep the movie running against the dragging scenes with over dramatic grand dad and anticlimax scenes of the football match.
Still, with his wide innocent smile and signature banana curve ball goaled through a window bus we revisited our childhood dreams.
