Marlina the murderer in four acts

[ films I have seen ]

Simply stunning Indonesian film.

(Copypasta'd from my film class, this review is about the genre of Marlina the murderer)

Marlina the murderer in four acts - as an aside what incredible cinematography! I feel like every shot was a painting - has a lot of the western genre structures, both semantic and syntactic, and from it's wikipedia page is described as a "feminist western".

Semantic:

Long open shots, desert landscapes, riding on horseback, playing the banjo, village towns, bandits, stagecoaches (ok it's a bus, but still), indiscriminate murder, and hot beating sun looking down upon it all. A veritable western vista!

Syntactic:

This is the more interesting comparison. Here we can see much of the shifting antimonies discussed earlier, for example:

Individual vs. Community (Government)

This is best exemplified with the scene in the police station, where Marlina is reporting her rape case as the police officer writes down her report with annoyed indifference. Much like in traditional westerns, the bureaucrats are seen as incompetent or corrupt.

Brutality vs. Legal systems

Whereas in traditional westerns legal systems are slow and only seek to slow the Real Man down, in Marlina they're useless for another reason: women simply aren't treated with the same respect from the male officers. The legal system literally doesn't work for them (as opposed to the traditional ones) this is why the men aren't scarred to commit treacherous acts against women - they don't fear the law. That's why brutality is the answer - because it is the only answer.

In essence I think that Marlina is a western, it plays to many of the syntactic and semantic elements of the western genre. But how it uses the western is so much more poignant and shows Mouly's genius. She shows us that the syntactic tropes of the voluntary isolation of the superior man - with his of disregard for the law, view of organizations as essentially corrupt, idea that individuality is best way forward - is actually an involuntary isolation of the average woman which stems from gender and class inequality. It really is quite an incredibly deliberate act, and to me it feels like the first time I've seen a movie that's actually used genre itself as part of the message.