Max Havelaar of de koffieveilingen der Nederlandsche handelsmaatschappij

I saw this movie about 30 years ago. I remember that I loved it. I spent 2 years in Java and it really captured a lot of the spirit there. The cinematography and colors in the move were fabulous. Indonesia was ruled by the Dutch for 450 years so they are not always that fond of their former colonizers. Anyone interested in a great book ought to read Krakatoa: the Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester. It too, captured the country in the 1800's and explains in great part some of the tensions that still exist there.

If anyone knows where to get a copy of it, please post here. I've been trying off and on for years to get a copy through Ebay and internet searches but to no avail.

Fons Rademakers is a Dutch director known for his adaptations of Dutch literature. Earlier I already wrote reviews about his films "The dark room of Damocles" (1963) and "The assault" (1986). With "Max Havelaar" he adapts one of the icons of Dutch literature.

"Max Havalaar" was written in 1860 and is about the Dutch colonial government in Indonesia. It has strong autobiographical elements as the writer Eduard Douwes Dekker has been a civil servant in the Dutch East Indies himself. One of the purposes of the book is to find rehabilitation for injustices Douwes Dekker believes were done to him during his career. He published the book under the pseudonym "Multatuli", latin for "I suffered a lot". This personal motive does not harm however the literary value of the novel.

"Max Havelaar" is a multi faceted book. It covers the following topics.

The way the colonial government of the Dutch East Indies was organized.

The way native princes collaborated with the Dutch government producing an intimately intertwined system of exploitation of the population.

A story within a story about this population featuring the boy Saïdjah and the girl Adinda.

The hypocrisy of Dutch traders in oriental spices, interpreting exploitation as development aid and beleiving it themself, as represented by the character of "Droogstoppel" (dry stubble).

A description about the essential element of bureaucracy as not including bad news in official reports because later you could be held accountable for not doing anything about it. This discription of bureaucracy is surprisingly topical for a novel from 1860!

The movie does not (and could not) treat al these elements. It is above all the story of a good Dutch civil servant (Max Havelaar played by Peter Faber), who tries to protect the native population, and a bad native prince (Adipati played by Adendu Soesilaningrat), who exploits the people. The other elements of the story are hinted at at best. The hypocrisy of Droogstoppel is magnificently illuminated by church services (with very hypocritical preaching) at the beginning and the end of the film.

For the Dutch film industry "Max Havelaar" is on the crossroad of the careers of two prominent Dutch directors. Fons Rademakers, the director of this film, was in the later stages of his career. Paul Verhoeven was the upcoming director at that time. Verhoeven himself was not involved with "Max Havelaar", but some people who would later become his regular "crew" were. I can mention scenario writer Gerard Soeteman, actor Rutger Hauer and cinematographer Jan de Bont. Nevertheless the film is "signature" Rademakers. The scene in which Havelaar saves a dog out af the sea with sharks nearby or the scene in which a native prince tries to blackmail a Dutch civil servant using beautiful young native dancing girls would have been done much more spicy by Verhoeven.

I was able to rent the DVD of this film from a place in Portland, Oregon. They had a copy of the original and seemed to believe the film had been placed in the public domain, available to be copied. You might want to check on that yourself. If that is true, it could be that you would be able to purchase a copy yourself. I'm not sure how the law of public domain applies to films created the 1980's since I would imagine the copyright would have been renewed somehow by 2008. Does anyone else have information regarding this?

I had not heard of this film before visiting this rental place but was looking for the films of Verhoeven when I stumbled on this one directed by Fons Rademakers. It seemed especially apropos since both my parents were Dutch-Indonesian and their parents were part of the latter days of Dutch colonial culture. It wasn't until Indonesian independence that my grandparents were persuaded to leave that beautiful land for the rainy gloomy weather of the Netherlands. After 25 years in the humid summers and bitter winters of Detroit, I ended up in Portland, where the weather is much more like Holland. Go figure!

In my opinion, this is one of the most powerful, beautiful and magnificent movies ever made, on every possible level: the way the story has been adapted from the book, to its incredible cinematography, character depiction, and the sensitive awareness of the complexities in the situation it describes, i.e., the finally brutal Dutch colonizing of Indonesia.

The contrasts between the beauty of the islands and its people with the horror of the disastrous situations brought on by the Dutch, are enormously moving and emotionally wrenching. Be careful about seeing it: it may change your life, as the book it was based on started to change Holland's awareness of the price, to themselves and the people of the islands, of its exploitation of these defenseless peoples. Never seen anything better, really.

The problem of some peoples of South Asia and Africa was that of their intrinsic corruption, their poor culture and great ignorance which made these peoples non-productive and incapable of everything slaves.

Even today these countries are horrible in all existing statistics.

European colonialism has always improved and brought great techniques and great culture, but men with blinkers do not understand good things, and follow evil and horrible traditions. As it was in Indonesia, it is still one of the worst countries in Asia today.

The film is good, has great intentions of justice, and is also very realistic.