Catatan Akhir Sekolah
Title: Catatan Akhir Sekolah (rather hard to translate, I myself choose ‘Last Notes in School’) [REXINEMA 2005]
Written by: Salman Aristo
Directed by: Hanung Bramantyo
Starred by: Ramon Y. Tungka, Marcel Chandrawinata, Vino G. Bastian, Joanna Alexandra, Christian Sugiono
Rating: Teenage (language, guys, language!)
OST out on fwd records (including Edson’s Sunday Lovely Sunday, The S.I.G.I.T.’s Did I Ask Your Opinion?, Teenage Death Star’s Absolute Beginner Terror etc.)
Characters
Agni (Ramon Y. Tungka)
Just like his name that means ‘fire’, Agni is the fiery angry young man in the film. He dreams of being a great director and he thinks he’s made some great art films (but nobody thinks the same way). He still loves his ex-girlfriend (Joanna Alexandra) who is now dating a perfect, popular student [read: the jerk] (Christian Sugiono).
Arian (Vino G. Bastian)
He’s a self-acclaimed talented writer, but just like Agni said, Arian is actually no more than a kuncen, a person who’s in charge of the wall magazine box key. And he angers other students for changing the content of the wall magazine anyway he likes (using largely his own materials of course). He’s hot tempered just like Agni, so no wonder they’re often engaged in fierce verbal battles.
Alde (Marcel Chandrawinata)
You have lots of fangirls. That means good, right? Not for Alde, the shy and the most sober one in the trio. He lives with his single-parent mother, so Oedipal interpretations of some of their scenes together are understandable. He plays bass for a disfunctional band and has been secretly in love for three years with the daughter of a food stall owner at their school.
The story
You’re in the last year of senior high school and for three years you have always been a no-one, either everyone’s joke-butt/hated one/excessively fangirled favourite, and you don’t think you have done anything special. So what do you do? Just hoping that it will all soon pass and then it’s time for college, yippee?
Not for three Fajar Harapan senior high school students, namely Arian, Alde, and Agni (see ‘Characters’ above for more details). Tired of being seemingly perpetual nerds, they try to do something that they think will make everyone remembers their names forever.
They decide to make a documentary, covering everything they can concerning life in high school: from lovers to junkies to skiver to teachers to bright students.
Their first attempt proven to be a total failure; the school security guard catches them while trying to do a filming around the restroom and the principal seizes their handycam for a day.
Things get worse because each of them can’t seem to focus their attention to their project. Agni is busy trying to win his ex-girlfriend back from her present abusive boyfriend, and when she shows positive signs to Agni, he chooses to abandon his project to spend time with her.
The jerk. (i.e. the popular one)
Angered, Arian leaves the project too and tries to join the team working on the school’s yearbook. Only Alde persists on filming the documentary. Too bad for him, some premans (street crooks) see him recording them bullying some students for money and they beat him up.
This accident somehow brings the trio back together. They understand now that what they need are a sounder plan and a solid teamwork backed up by their juniors (means they have to dispose of their arrogance towards the younger students). So again they rise and continue their documentary project. Not only they’re documenting their (last) days at school as their memento, but they begin to see things they haven’t noticed before and realised what those things meant to their lives.
My thoughts on it
First of all, nice opening scene. Agni is screening one of his shitty art films to the school movie club. When his fellow club members comment angrily that if that’s what Agni can give after borrowing the school’s camera for weeks then he’s just nothing than shit, all the furore begins and the camera moves quickly from one place to another in a continuous motion, introducing us to the characters and showing us the daily life in Fajar Harapan. Very interesting, and it means that the makers of the film has studied well the structure of the school building they used as the set. Because it must be hard to get everyone at the right spot, run here and there and meet each other at some points before they part again and meet some other people etc. if you don’t know the building well.
And I have to give thumbs up for the decision to use an ordinary senior high school as the set instead of one of ‘international’ expensive schools. Fajar Harapan is just a common Indonesian school, even down to the dirty restroom. And the kids-they’re not the sinetron types; they look like everyday’s kids who go to school with crammed public transport or motorcycles. Well, some lucky ones do drive their own cars to school. But then jerks like Christian Sugiono’s character drives car. *laughs*
The dirty restroom. Ugh!
No, the one sleeping leaning to Alde is no-one known to them. *laughs* Haven’t all of us experienced a similar thing?
The story (written by Salman Aristo) is a bit draggy - there are lots of scenes that I think could just be omitted without disturbing the continuity of the story as a whole.
But all in all, I like this film. If only the production was a bit better, this could be one of the best films of the year. Who cares about other empty teenflicks like Dealova, Lovely Luna etc [add other shitty titles to the list]? This is the teenflick you should watch. I don’t really like blatantly showing ‘the morals of the story’ in my reviews, but then I think I have to say that this film ‘teach’ kids that being young is a very dear and valuable thing; do something worthy with it as you can. And yes, you can.
Some other actors needed to be mentioned: Joshua Pandelaki as Pak Boris, the corrupt principal with weak knees to young girls, and whoever he is who plays the chairman of ‘Rohis/Kerohanian Islam’ (Muslim Student Community) for looking exactly like the image of a chairman Rohis.
Bonus features: a video by Mocca and The S.I.G.I.T. (caps below).
Trivia:
- There’s a rumour circulating that the S.I.G.I.T. appeared in an edition of NME, but as what (Review? Article? Readers’ letters? Others?) missriboet and I are unable to confirm this since we no longer buy NME lately. So if anyone knows anything about this, I’d be glad to know…
- Oh, you must remember that I have mentioned Marcel’s twin, Mischa and how they look so lovingly together ^___^