The Year of Living Dangerously

Starring:Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, Linda Hunt, Michael Murphy, Bill Kerr, Noel Ferrier, Bembol Roco, Paul Sonkkila, Ali Nur, Dominador Robridillo, Joel Agona, Mike Emperio, Bernardo Nacilla, Domingo Landicho, Hermino De Guzman, Coco Marantha, Kuh Ledesma, Norma Uatuhan, Lito Tolentino, Cecily Polson
Director: Peter Weir
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com essential video

Australian director Peter Weir had made several excellent films before The Year of Living Dangerously was released to critical acclaim in 1983, but it was this moody tale of romance and political upheaval that bought Weir and star Mel Gibson their tickets to Hollywood. (Weir's next film was the 1985 Harrison Ford hit Witness.) Set in Indonesia in 1965, the film focuses on a group of Caucasian journalists and photographers who are in Jakarta to cover the political upheavals that are threatening to collapse the unstable government of President Sukarno. Gibson plays an Australian correspondent named Guy Hamilton who's determined to get the best story, and he's given invaluable assistance from Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), a half-Indonesian, half-Australian photojournalist who knows the culture inside and out. Billy introduces Guy to Jill (Sigourney Weaver) and their romance develops in an atmosphere of political unrest and constant personal danger. This journalistic adventure is compelling in itself (and Hunt's gender-switching performance won her a much-deserved Oscar), but it's Weir's creation of a rich, authentically exotic locale that gives the movie its alluring and subtly mysterious atmosphere. A tale of tragedy and survival, it's also a story about fascinating people at a turbulent juncture of history, and the empathy they feel for each other and the culture that surrounds them. --Jeff Shannon

Average customer rating:

Great film, poor DVD
No quibbles with the movie, but middling video and audio quality
A memorable art cinema!
Hot view of the fall of imperialism
Great Movie, Bad Sound

The Year of Living Dangerously
Starring: Mel Gibson , Sigourney Weaver , Linda Hunt , Michael Murphy , and Bill Kerr
Director: Peter Weir
Manufacturer: MGM (Warner)
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 0792836006
Release Date: 1997-08-20

Amazon.com essential video

Customer Reviews:

Great film, poor DVD.......2007-06-13

The film is great, the DVD completely outdated and the film in desperate need of a new HD transfer. Hopefully soon on HD disc. This transfer is 90s garbage. Not much better than VHS.

No quibbles with the movie, but middling video and audio quality.......2007-05-01

I saw this movie in the theater when it was first released. I can't say I actually remember the cinematography specifically. Certainly the VHS release was never much to brag about -- grainy and awful, really.

I had higher hopes for this DVD. Although it won't matter to many, my copy, purchased last year, claims on the back of the box to have two versions of the film -- anamorphic 2.35:1, and full screen. There is no full screen. False advertising, not that many will care, but the discrepancy is strange.

The video quality is mediocre on an absolute basis, and compared to contemporary DVD releases it is poor. Watching it, I keep having the sense that several gradations of color intensity have been smudged over -- what's dark is dark, what's light is light, and in-between I have the sense that a lot of detail is being lost. Mostly the picture looks a bit indistinct. The color is fine as far as it goes -- a little on the washed out side, if you ask me.

Yes, another viewer noted that the sound quality is uninspiring. Plain old stereo, possibly from an optical track, as far as I can tell. Pretty shabby, considering the caliber of the stars involved and the technical standards DVD buyers come to expect these days.

If you haven't seen Year of Living Dangerously, I agree with those who have praised the quality of the film, and you should rent it or borrow it. Any movie that quotes the gospel of Luke and Tolstoy in the first five minutes is obviously a cut above the average entertainment film. Linda Hunt! What can I say! You believe, absolutely, that she is the diminutive male photographer, Billy Kwan. Linda is the narrator, and more of a star of this movie than Mel Gibson, though Gibson is not shabby at all in his performance either.

I hesitate to recommend a purchase. This beautiful film badly needs a proper remastering. My counsel is to wait for that before laying down your money on the barrelhead.

A memorable art cinema!.......2007-03-26

The year of living dangerously was at least to my standpoint, the artistic launch for Mel Gibson. He really convinces as the naïve journalist who is in the middle of a political whirlwind, just months before Sukarno' fall in 1965.

Peter Weir is a real master in the employment of the camera. His stylized handle is always active, scrutinizing and telling us much more the lines of the script reveal. Body language, attitudes, moods and that dark atmosphere of oppression, violence, nastiness and corruption at several levels, without abusing of close ups of admirable shots. It's truly a film that must be read at several levels; its texture, the game of lights permeates and dep9cts an admirable masterwork that must be seen more than once.

In case you haven't watched it; it's time for you to make it. It will be a wise option, that carves in relief why the director of Gallipoli, Mosquito Coast and Master and Commander is today one of the most prestigious and talented filmmakers in the world.

Hot view of the fall of imperialism.......2007-03-12

Gibson and Weaver star in theis steamy view of the fall of imperialism in Indonesia. They start living the expat life in Jakarta, and live the transformation as the country moves to military rule. The movie is interesting on many fronts: Seeing the leads before they became megastars, watching the subtle condemnation of expats amongst locals, and the history woven into the fiction. Supporting roles are played superbly as well. It's a great movie!

Great Movie, Bad Sound.......2007-02-21

This is one of the great screenplays of filmdom, up there with Man for All Seasons and Lawrence of Arabia. . . .with fabulous acting: one of Gibson's best performances as a sane person, and of course, Linda Hunt's performance won her a supremely-deserved best supporting actress oscar -- clearly, the best actress-in-a-male role of all time. A suitably exotic music score by Maurice Jarre, and a Vangelis tune that became a cult classic among the new-wave set. . . but whoever dubbed the sound onto the DVD left the "mono" button on . . . . my LaserDisk version of the movie has beautiful stereo sound -- and the lack of stereo is an almost fatal flaw in the DVD . . . I'd wait until the BluRay or HD version comes out, hopefully reengineered.

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