The reiteration of literature into film is a monumental task. These two media offer many similarities as well as striking contrasts. Literary reality processes visual narratives absorbed by the author into a series of precise textual descriptions, from which corresponding images are expected to emerge. Conversely, in film, visualization through a series of images, editing, framing, and photographic angles is designed to achieve consistency or “controlled inconsistency” of the textual narrative being reiterated.
The matter becomes even more complicated when it comes to today’s film media. The director’s reluctance to comply with the adapted literary text becomes a way to assess whether a film is successful or not. It is a kind of tug-of-war strategy that requires considerable skill and craftsmanship in order to not fall into mediocrity.
All that tension—if we can call it that—is evident in Nobody Ever Dies Here (Fachri Ghazali, 2025), Pen Sword (Zahra Zulya, 2025), House (Kayla Miska, 2025), In Melquiades Room: Causa-Prima (Rafael Marius, 2025), Inline Align (Shelvira Alyya, 2025), and The Cow (Misbahul Khoir, 2025), which were crafted for them to reiterate, and thus produce a new compound that may merely leave traces of its textual literary narrative. As charcoal drawings on Padalarang paper, the images and depictions are created in dense contrast so that the texture and its lightness and darkness are very pronounced. The images, which are occasionally blurry, resemble the dussel technique in drawing, giving them volume and depth.
In In Melquiades Room: Causa-Prima, the character who rises from the dead is seen through the trinkets in their “house”. Things are collected and perhaps given names, simply to stave off the epidemic of dementia that will plague the city. However, this “picture film” allows us to enjoy it without having to read the thick book. They have written their own book. It doesn’t have to be, and perhaps shouldn’t be, linked to Gabriel García Márquez. In this film, Gabo is merely words and names without a past or context.
The pleasure in watching these films is to witness a rebirth. Melquíades (indeed) died in Singapore, but he rises again in these films to become something.
Something else.
–Agung Kurniawan
