‘Kulari ke Pantai’: A delightful kids’ flick
Children are really the most difficult creatures to look after, especially after they begin to venture into the world and adapt to the environment around them.
No matter how they are shaped by the outside world, it is still the parents who take the greatest responsibility to guide them properly.
Children start life as empty, innocent and unaware slays of the world around them. The biggest factor surrounding their identity formation and the way they think comes primarily from how their parents raised and treated them in their childhood, the character they live in, and the peers they choose to associate themselves with as they grow older.
The new film Riri Riza and Mira Lesmana named Kulari to the Beach explores these facts in a very relevant way, appealing to both the struggles that Indonesian parents in this day and age may face with their children, as well as exploring how the children are right interacts with their surroundings in order to find out who they are.
Kulari is a film full of genuine humor, natural, heartfelt, interesting stories, and the best performances of its players, making it one of the best Indonesian children’s movies in a decade, almost there with other Riri Riza classics such as Adventure Sherina 2000 (Sherina Adventure) and Laskar Pelangi 2008 (Bullet Forces).
Kulari revolves around the adventures of two preteens and the mother of one of them. As the story progresses, all three develop as characters and every anxiety they hold at the beginning is settled in a satisfactory way.
Marsha Timothy, perhaps one of the best actresses in Indonesia today, plays the mother of newcomer Maisha Kanna, Sam (short for ‘Ocean’, meaning ‘Ocean’) and aunt to Lil Lilli Latisha, the character, Happy.
Having been born and raised in Rote Island in East Nusa Tenggara, Sam presents herself as a natural child, falls in love with the beach and surfing, while Happy presents herself as a spoiled teenager who constantly speaks English with her cell phone and views nature as uncivilized.
Sam and Happy’s personality clashed even deep into the movie, and Uci Marsha Timothy’s character, trying to keep things together between two children as the only adults while struggling with all the adult things he had to do in between. He deals with children in a caring, caring, and down-to-earth nature as the parent figures do. Even when faced with car problems, he radiates affection. However, he is still human.
Fortunately, he found help in the many people he and his children met on the street. There’s a photographer (played by Edward Suhadi and Francisca Suhadi), an off-the-but-still-unexplained entertainment promoter to find a good photo location for his dance troupe played by Ligwina Hananto and American surfer who was born and raised in America. boy Dani, played by Dani Maxey, who speaks Indonesian with a genuine Papuan accent.
Dani stole the show in every scene he was in, even in the most stressful moments, as if he were a movie comic relief. This is true, but with a funny story, the comic relief seems too much. Fortunately, Dani’s presence on the screen is always fun to watch.
However, characters interact with the different types of people they encounter on their journeys from Jakarta to Banyuwangi at the end of East Java. Thus, they are exposed to a variety of different mindsets, luring them out of their comfort zone as they adapt.
In one instance, Happy, a rich man typical of Indonesia’s upper middle class, feels that any problem can be solved with money. But he does not do this consciously. He does this because it seems this is the only thing he knows to do when dealing with problems, as shown several times in the movie. Her parents, played by Lukman Sardi and Karina Suwandi, are rich Jakartaers who tend to underestimate things like Uci’s choice to marry a man from Rote and choose to raise their child there.
Happy is also preoccupied with the idea of adjusting himself and showing himself in social media as demonstrated by the peer pressure he feels when he talks to his friends, who share the same richness. His experience penetrated the social environment and his fortunes unintentionally shaped him into a discriminating and classy person, as demonstrated by the first time he had a fight with Sam.
courtasy : thejakartapost.com
photo : The Jakarta Post
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