In an age where some call themselves activists merely through social media posting, stories of the dangers, consequences and occasional, very hard-won rewards of boots-on-the-ground political activism have additional potency. Though Yosep Anggi Noen‘s compellingly angry and anguished “The Sea Speaks His Name” is set predominantly in the 1990s, chronicling grassroots student resistance to Indonesian military dictator Suharto in the fraught final years of his punishing New Order regime, this impassioned political thriller is as universally timely as it is historically specific and eye-opening. It bears a message for anyone moved to act or speak out against corrupt institutions and administrations in the present day.
That message isn’t a blandly inspirational or emptily motivational one. Characters suffer and sacrifice much for their principles in “The Sea Speaks His Name,” and the film poignantly honors those who work towards instigating change without ever getting to see the outcome. But it’s not without hope either, gradually bringing its community-minded story to “a small light at the end of a dark tunnel.”
Playing in competition at the Busan Film Festival, Noen’s sixth feature returns him to the subject and milieu of his Locarno-premiered 2016 film “Solo, Solitude,” a biopic of the protest poet Widji Thukul, who has exiled for his anti-Suharto activism. Adapted from a celebrated and widely translated novel (with the same English title) by Leila S. Chudori, who also acts as a producer here, “The Sea Speaks His Name” paints on a broader canvas to rousing effect. It grabs viewers by the heart in comparable fashion to “I’m Still Here,” Walter Salles’ similarly urgent and sorrowful chronicle of a forced disappearance in a military dictatorship. It won’t match that film’s profile, but global arthouse distributors should take an interest, and further festival play is a given.
The film happily reunites Noen with Reza Rahadian, the charismatic lead of his 2024 Netflix crime drama “24 Hours With Gaspar,” and a sharp, emotionally engaged asset here. He plays Laut, an earnestly dedicated activist introduced in a heart-in-mouth prologue set in 1998: Preparing dinner in the midst of a power outage, he’s surprised when a group of government operatives crash his Jakarta apartment, seizing, restraining and removing him before he can say a word in his defence, as neighbors in his building look on anxiously. The agents address him as Amir Zein, but we soon learn that’s an alias; in a hopeless letter written from prison to his sister Asmara — epistolary narration drives much of the film’s action — he begins to tell his story.
We rewind to 1991, where, as a fresh-faced university student in Yogyakarta, Laut meets and falls in with magnetic campus firebrand Kinan (Dian Sastrowardoyo), who leads a rebellious discussion group focused in particular on literature banned by the state: “In this country, books are threats,” he says in voiceover. Though not a complete naif — his father (Arswendy Bening Swara) is a journalist all too familiar with the ways of the government — Laut finds he can no longer ignore violent systems of state oppression; in time, he and Kinan, along with their cohorts, determine that discussion is no longer enough, and commit to a more actively radical student resistance movement.
They soon learn that this is no game, and the dictatorships’s heavy-handed response to their activism requires Laut, like many others, to change his name and go into hiding. In stages, he is lost to his supportive but fretful family — Christine Hakim, standout star of fellow Busan competition title “Ibuku,” plays his mother — and after his 1998 capture, the film’s focus shifts to their pained but persistent efforts to find him, or at least to piece together his story. As Asmara, the sibling who gravely inherits his cause, Yunita Siregar gives a lovely, stoically moving performance; if the film misses Laut’s force of personality when he disappears from the narrative, so do all those connected to him.
“The Sea Speaks His Name” is assembled in straightforward but effectively sweeping fashion, with Dinda Amanda’s nimble editing making light work of a 134-minute running time, and ceding the drama to stirring archival footage at the close. Batara Goempar’s ambiently somber lensing, meanwhile, reinforces the film’s thriller trappings, often highlighting faces and bodies in pools of darkness, as befits a tense, tightly wound tale of people confining themselves to the shadows for their survival.