RAINBOW TROOPS (Indonesia, 2008)
Directed by: Riri Riza
Starring: Cut MIni Theo, Ikranagara, Tora Sudiro, Siamet Rahardjo

A major crowd-pleaser, RAINBOW TROOPS is based on the most successful Indonesian novel of all time and the film became a massive hit, and one of the biggest Indonesian blockbusters ever made. But maybe because it doesn’t fit into the arthouse straightjacket, or maybe because film festival programmers consider it too mainstream, it’s barely played outside of Indonesia.  Even though the Asian Film Awards nominated it for “Best Film” last year, alongside critically-acclaimed movies like THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD and TOKYO SONATA, it’s a movie that’s too popular and too mainstream to appeal to the snobs who have decided they’re our cultural gatekeepers. Their loss.

Set in the Seventies, on the Sumatran Island of Belitong, a rural, Muslim school is being closed down because it can’t meet the minimum enrollment requirement of ten students. But on the first day of school, miraculously, ten poor kids show up for class and the doors stay open. These little rug rats are a motley crew ranging from the incredibly poor Lintang to the musically gifted, and slightly less poor, Mahar. Their teachers, Bu Muslimah and Pak Harfan (Cut Mini and veteran Indonesian superstar Ikranagara) are relieved at narrowly dodging the axe and the movie follows their students over the next several years as life deals them one unexpected blow after another.

It sounds predictable, but director Riri Riza wisely chose to cast his young ensemble entirely from local Belitong kids with no acting experience, and the result is a series of performances that invest these characters, who could have been cliches, with a gritty, spontaneous authenticity. Scored by the husband and wife team of Aksan and Titi Sjuman and with an ironically bittersweet title pop song by Nidji (that’ll stick in your head for months), this flick becomes something truly stunning as it unfolds. With glossy, big budget production values, it’s amazing that no one in America has picked this movie up yet for distribution. But that’s okay, because you can still see it here. RAINBOW TROOPS is a warm-hearted delight that gives mainstream moviemaking a good name.