PEDHUT: A GRANDPA’S UNIFORM AND THE OTHER THINGS OF FEAR
by Ayesha Talreja
This review is published as part of the Youth Critics Initiative IV, a collaborative mentorship incubator between the 26th Reel Asian Film Festival and TACLA.
What can you do when you see someone going through such intense pain and emotion other than just standing there and watching? Do you feel compelled to help them? Or do you let them reach their own solutions based on their own history and present? Christian Banisrael’s film, A GRANDPA’S UNIFORM AND THE OTHER THINGS OF FEAR, captivatingly asks these important questions while casting a voyeuristic and outsider’s gaze at an elderly man clearly dealing with the complexities of some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Left with little financial and emotional support in his rural village and commonly referred to as the local madman, the man clings to always wearing a Babinsa officer uniform, while dealing with plenty of his own haunting and invisible ghosts.
The film, set in rural Indonesia, takes a deeper look at the long-lasting impacts of war that are left on ordinary people. Using an engrossing musical score that ebbs and flows with the surprises of the plot itself, and sound design that keeps viewers hooked: we are guessing throughout; trying to piece together the puzzle of the protagonist’s past that haunts him in many different ways. Grandpa is depicted as unstable, paranoid, and confused, and the actor Maulana Mas does an excellent job conveying the character’s pain that we cannot see, quite effortlessly making the viewer question everything we thought we knew about the character and the world portrayed while filling us with uncertainty and dread. In the last few minutes of the short film, the viewer is forced to consider our own understanding of the protagonist: were his fears of being watched and attacked rational all along? What exactly is the truth? Is the narrator really as unreliable as we think, or is the film asking us to wake up to the unspeakable and often silently accepted truths of war and trauma? Why did we as viewers believe Grandpa was an unreliable narrator in the first place? Herein lies an erstwhile conundrum when watching or appreciating art: should an audience blindly follow whatever is depicted on screen, by whoever the protagonist is? How much of our own lived experiences do we bring in when witnessing a film, or for that matter, art of any kind? These are all questions that came up for me while watching this film.
The main protagonist of the film, the unreliable narrator Grandpa, is grippingly haunted by ghosts of his pasts. Based on his obsession with wearing a Babinsa uniform, one might guess that he played a crucial part in a war.[1]
Perhaps, it was the Indonesian War of Independence, fought against the Dutch in the latter half of the 1940s, which unfolded against the global backdrop of countries all over the world, including those in Africa, South America and Asia fighting for their independence from Western colonial powers. There were no clean breaks for many countries, including the archipelago nation of Indonesia. The film grapples with questions and notions of how modernity and the past can butt heads by comparing and contrasting modernity with the past, using the characters of the Babinsa officer and grandpa. Indeed, the film attempts to portray a small segment of larger issues of contemporary global development, dealing with the challenges of the global development order, as well as regional conflicts, of local elites, and of local traditions, beliefs and customs that bring with them their own set of complicated power dynamics.
Additionally, through its filmic choices, A GRANDPA’S UNIFORM AND THE OTHER THINGS OF FEAR teases many questions about the nature of war and how societies treat veterans and our most vulnerable; it gently weaves in a juxtaposition of Western-style modernity alongside traditional Indonesian culture. While showcasing traditional aspects of Indonesian culture through dance, clothing, and music, the film does not present a one-sided view or a this or that is better attitude; it portrays the rich and layered textures of many places in our globalized world, through showing the dynamism of the nearby village to where grandpa lives. The film does not deviate much in terms of setting, just to show a busy marketplace, which makes the viewer feel very much closed in with the protagonist and his mindset of pain and confusion. Interestingly, the film also showed how easy it was to buy official-looking army fatigue from a nearby shop — what does this mean in terms of the proximity of the military in everyday life? Perhaps it could mean nothing, but it is a noticeable plot point in the film that stood out.
Overall, this short and at times confusing film does an excellent job portraying the traumas of war and some of the ramifications it can have on everyday people, and how it can reinforce power structures. It also deals with themes of growing old in isolation, while using some aspects of local storytelling and culture to make the viewer question what they have seen in terms of an unreliable narrator, and how they choose to interpret what has unfolded before them. The film also does a great job of using cinematic elements such as music and dramatic storytelling to portray an ever-growing and impending sense of unease and despair within the viewer, perhaps likening it to an experience from war: disorienting and leaving you with ideas you will think of, ponder, and question long after it is over.
[1] A Babinsa officer is a senior-ranking Indonesian official, in charge of carrying out territorial defense for different villages within a region.
Ayesha Talreja is from the West End of Toronto and studied International Development Studies at McGill University. She has been involved in many different community initiatives and currently works at a nonprofit. Most recently, she spent two years teaching in Mumbai, working with children of migrant labourers. She is passionate about issues of access to resources, equity and justice.
