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The Year of Living Dangerously
Capsule by Dave Kehr
From the Chicago Reader
Peter Weir's attempt to make a Casablanca for the 80s--a romance set against a background of exoticism and intrigue--suffers from hazy plotting and a constant, pretentious mystification. The lovers--Mel Gibson as a naive Australian reporter and Sigourney Weaver as an employee of the British embassy, both caught up in the Indonesian political turmoil of 1965--have none of the character depth necessary to hold their own against Weir's parade of social rot (a la Fellini), supernatural metaphors, and moralizing dwarfs; they seem like second leads in their own movie. Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli) always emphasizes the picturesque over the dramatic; he has again made a handsome film without a single vivid moment. With Michael Murphy and Linda Hunt.
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