It's a long, dark night of the soul in THE BARBED-WIRE FENCE, a skillful but oppressive Indonesian war drama that finds a group of rebels grappling with their imprisonment while in the custody of Dutch colonialists. With several of their comrades recently executed, the soldiers are left to contemplate their fates - and plan a possible escape - as the threat of their impending mortality closes in.
Director Asrul Sani treats his subject with an appropriate sense of existential dread, cloaking the film in swaths of inky shadow and closing in on his cloistered characters as though filming a stage play. The use of what largely seem to be non-professional actors, as well as the severe minimalism of the soundtrack (there is almost no non-diegetic music) and mise-en-scene is redolent of an Indonesian Bresson, and like that director, your appreciation for Sani's style will probably depend on your tolerance for this kind of purposeful restraint. FENCE certainly shows great facility with the style, though I must admit the oppressive atmosphere, coupled with its grueling two-and-a-half-hour runtime, made this an experience I appreciated more on an intellectual than gut level. I'm glad I saw it, and am happy the Indonesian Film Archive has managed to rescue it from the jaws of decay (apparently after being suppressed for decades, the few surviving elements were in very rough shape), but I can't say I'll be rushing to re-watch it anytime soon.
