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I am a little amazed that, so far, only 40 comments have been entered. Fortunately most are of high quality, and all the important points related to the film are clearly highlighted. So, I will not repeat what has been well said by others. I want to explain one additional point, it has to do with my personal experience but might be interesting to mention.

I'm a professional expatriate, living overseas for 25 years. I'm not talking about an American in Paris or an Englishman in New York, I mean African steppes, tropical jungles, Indian slums. Living in a totally foreign country, in a totally strange culture, imperfectly understanding the local language, bewildered by alien logic, you experience a permanent sense of unease. You adapt, you learn to cope, you make what you hope are friends. But you never forget that you are a stranger in unknown territory, and that you are vulnerable.

You may peacefully walk on the street one minute, the next minute bullets are flying all around you. In the evening you have a pleasant drink with your neighbour, in the morning you are arrested, accused of being a foreign mercenary. When you travel inland you come at a road block, not knowing if they'll let you pass, or harass you for a couple of hours, or confiscate your car. As a foreigner in developing countries, you are constantly confronted with uncertainty, an intangible menace lurking around the corner.

I find that TYOLD transmits this sense of menace very poignantly. Many people have commented on its brilliant sense of place, the accurate depiction of Indonesia and the events that took place at the time. Others mention that you get a very real feeling of the tension and uncertainty journalists in times of upheaval are subjected to. But I would like to extend it beyond journalists. The sense of menace in TYOLD is eminently recognizable by all who have lived in countries where the police is not there to protect you, the laws are not there to make society more civilized, the hospitals are not there to cure you. In TYOLD, the menace is made visible because of the troubles that erupt, but usually you do not have to live through civil war when overseas. Still, the menace is not less real, and the sense of foreboding haunting every expatriate was very convincingly conveyed in the film.

This excellent movie is set in 1965 Indonesia, when an Australian reporter named Gay Hamilton is assigned on his first work as a foreign journalist. His apparently simple mission to Yakarta soon turns hot when he interviews a rebel leader , while President Sukarno was toppling by pressure left from communists and right from military. Guy soon is the hottest reporter with the help of his photographer, a native, half- Chinese midget named Kwan . Eventually Hamilton must confront moral conflicts and the relationship between Billy and him reaches some problems connected with a British diplomatic attaché , at the same time the political upheaval takes place in coup détat.

Mel Gibson is good as correspondent covering a conflict and finding himself becoming personally involved when he befriends a free-lance photographer named Billy Kwan and falling for a beautiful Embassy assistant, a mesmerizing Sigourney Weaver .The movie has its touching moments found primarily in the superb supporting performances as Michael Murphy as lively journalist , Bill Kerr as veteran Colonel and of course diminutive Linda Hunt who steals the show as sensible photographer in her Academy Award-winning character, a woman acting a man, and well deservedly prized. Moving and intimate musical score though composed by synthesizer by Maurice Jarre. Atmospheric cinematography that adequate as a mood-piece by Russell Boyd.

The motion picture is stunningly directed by Australian director Peter Weir who achieved several hits (Witness, Gallipoli, The last wave) and some flop (Mosquito coast, The plumber). The movie belongs to sub-genre that abounded in the 80s about reporters around the world covering dangerous political conflicts , such as Nicaragua in ¨Under fire¨ by Robert Spottswoode with Nick Nolte , Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy, Salvador in ¨Salvador¨ by Oliver Stone with James Woods and James Belushi, and Libano in ¨Deadline¨ by Nathaliel Gutman with Christopher Walken and Hywel Bennett. These movies are very much in the vein of ¨The year of living dangerously¨.

Peter Weir's movie, set in Sukarno's Indonesia in 1965, can be seen as four films in one. The first is socio-political, focusing on the plight of the impoverished Indonesian people, the impending insurrection by the communist movement, and the bloody, chaotic aftermath of the coup. The second, coloured in Graham Greene-ish tones, has a cast of western journalists and diplomats failing to make sense of what's happening around them, and falling back on sex, drink and cynicism. The third - and most important in commercial-cinema terms - is a convincingly acted romance between rookie foreign correspondent Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) and British diplomat Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), culminating in an unlikely and sentimental ending to the film.

But it is the fourth of these "sub-movies" which is the most intriguing; this concerns the diminutive and enigmatic Australian/Chinese photographer Billy Kwan, an astonishing - and Oscar winning - portrayal by actress Linda Hunt. Billy sees himself as a puppet-master, pulling the strings of friends and colleagues, particularly of Jill and Guy, whom he throws together. But his need to take control also motivates him to help local people, not through indirect and political means, but directly like an early Christian, and this apparently benign course leads to tragedy. Billy is the true heart and conscience of this film.

Weir is not entirely successful in weaving these strands together, and leaves a few gaps in both plot and characterisation. He is also occasionally guilty of melodrama (a fault which, in the movie, Jill warns Guy about), especially in the film's closing scenes - though certainly not where he shows communist sympathisers being shot, which is factual. On the whole, however, the movie works on both commercial and artistic levels, and should be seen.

Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously is now an Australian classic and, along with the likes of Panic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli, helped establish Weir as a film-maker to watch our for and eased his inevitable transition to Hollywood. Living Dangerously may now be a more obviously flawed film in 2017 than it was back in '82, but it still retains a sense of raw power stemming from an uncanny sense of place and danger. The setting is Indonesia, 1965, and President Sukarno's grasp on power is quickly fading. It's the eve of his overthrowing by the military and the communist purge that quickly followed, and journalists in Jakarta huddle in sweaty bars, feeding on scraps thrown to them by Sukarno, knocking back beers and chasing tail to pass the time.

The last guy left in a hurry, so young Australian foreign correspondent Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) arrives in Jakarta without a single informant or friend to lean on. The diplomats and fellow journalists who inhabit the same bar every night take no pity on him, but sympathetic Chinese-Australian dwarf named Billy Kwan sees something in the handsome, chain-smoking young man and decides to help him. Kwan believes strongly in Sukarno, the President his own people has dubbed the 'Puppet Master' due to his ability to keep the peace between the Communist Party and the military, and that he will save his poverty-stricken people from starvation. As well as setting up a key interview for the young journalist, he also introduces Hamilton to Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), a beautiful assistant working for the British embassy. As the conflict heats up and the stories become juicier and more perilous, Hamilton must choose between his job, his lover and his close friend.

The flaws of The Year of Living Dangerously are more apparent now, 35 years after its release, as the idea of cinema's tendency to 'whitewash' is now more openly discussed. It becomes clear very quickly that the most interesting character in the film is Billy Kwan. He has a much more personal attachment to the events playing out, and proves a more charismatic screen presence than Gibson's blander outsider. He is also played astonishingly well by Linda Hunt, the only actor to win an Academy Award for the playing a character of the opposite sex. When Kwan retreats into the background around the half-way mark, the focus shifts to the blossoming romance between Hamilton and Bryant, and the film becomes far less interesting in the process. However, there are some terrific individual scenes. The initial excitement of shooting a violent protest quickly gets out of hand, and a horrifyingly tense slow-drive through a heavily-armed road-block will leave you holding your breath. Yet it's difficult to shake the feeling that Weir's movie would have been far more absorbing with Kwan as the driving force at its centre.

It's 1965 Jakarta in Indonesia under the brutal rule of President Sukarno. Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) is on his first foreign assignment for the Australian Broadcasting Service. He is befriended by photographer half-Chinese dwarf Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt). There is an air of anti-western feeling. Guy is lost without connections until Billy starts helping him out. He has an affair with British diplomat Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver). It's a world of murky Cold War politics, secrets and trying morality.

This has a great exotic atmosphere. The movie has a sense of impending doom. Mel Gibson is terrific and shows his superior star power. Linda Hunt creates such a compelling character. It does need to heighten the tension a little. The plot meanders in this murky world. It needs a direction. Nevertheless I just love the dark exotic mood.

The year 1965 is running not very smoothly in Jakarta, Indonesia. Against the background of tension and struggle for power between the two powerful forces of communist PKI and the islamic generals, a story of love, intrigue, treason and loyalty takes place. Billy the Dwarf, little body but great soul, personifies the last one, finishing by refusing the world of disloyalty in which he's forced to live. Sukarno the then Indonesian president, champion of non-alignment, tries to achieve the impossible: to combine fire and water, Islam and communism. The former, backed by CIA finishes to win over the latter backed by China and a mass slaughter of communists takes place then. The Australian male journalist and the British (secret agent too?) diplomat woman live an agitated romance against the above mentioned background in which they also participate. The movie is only slightly focused on the appalling state of misery endured by Indonesian people in the middle of this struggle for power. Too much slightly perhaps and this is its weakest point. Anyway the story achieves its aim and is strong enough to secure the spectator's attention till the end. One last word for Sigourney Weaver's performance as a beautiful, sensual, intelligent and self-confident woman as always.

In "The Year of Living Dangerously" director Peter Weir attempts much and accomplishes most of his goals. It's a socio-political essay on the dangers of Western meddling in Third World countries. It's a fascinating view into the challenges of journalism in a volatile foreign country. It's a steamy romance involving two beautiful, intelligent characters. It's a distinctly Far Eastern morality play that seems to delight in yin/yang paradoxes. Plus it's one of the best films at evoking the mood, texture, and sensuality of life in Southeast Asia. Don't be too harsh on Weir for the lapses in historic accuracy and plotting, because it's a complicated, busy landscape he is painting here. The best things about the film are:

-Linda Hunt's amazing performance. Unlike other gender-bending performances (Julie Andrews in "Victor/Victoria", Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie") you never once give any thought to the fact that this is a woman playing a man. It's a seamless transition and a performance of immense heart and honesty. The image of a distraught Billy pounding at his typewriter, pleading "What then must we do?" while an aria swells around him and the eyes of Jakarta's poor stare at him from his own photographs, is an incredibly moving scene.

-The atmosphere created by the combination of Russell Boyd's cinematography and Maurice Jarre's score. Take a look at the scene with Weaver walking through the streets of Jakarta in a tropical downpour. The effect is breathtaking.

-The chemistry between Gibson and Weaver. You can feel the heat between them. Unlike other posters here, I believe their romance is one of the film's strong points.

I agree that the ending is a bit of a letdown, but it doesn't diminish Weir's accomplishments. "The Year of Living Dangerously" is a startling unique film, and certainly one his best.

Peter Weir directed this account of the Indonesian revolution of 1965, which sees inexperienced Australian foreign correspondent Guy Hamilton(played by Mel Gibson) covering this story, with the help of a dwarf photographer(played by Linda Hunt, who won a best supporting actress Academy Award playing a man!) who has come to care deeply about the country, though will feel betrayed by its outcome. Sigourney Weaver plays an embassy aide who becomes romantically involved with Guy, who also helps him with the story, though events will spiral out-of-control, endangering all their lives... Moderately interesting film has solid performances, though the story is unfocused, and only sporadically powerful. Still, mostly worthwhile.

15 years after its release, I finally get to see what to my knowledge is the only english-speaking film that tells the story of Indonesia circa the 1965 revolution.

A very young Gibson is convincing as the inexperienced but ambitious reported determined to make his mark in telling the story of Sukarno's last moments in power. Equally brilliant is Sigourney Weaver, and yet one feels that this film did not give her the opportunity to show her true calibre.

The one who ultimately steals the show, then, is Linda Hunt, playing the enigmatic and passionate Billy, who understands the true psyche of Indonesia better than any of the other foreign characters in this story.

When Billy solemnly expresses his disappointment to Guy, proclaiming, "I created you", it evoked images of Weir's latest masterpiece, The Truman Show, where Christof has fashioned the persona of Truman Burbank for his TV spectacle. Perhaps a running theme in Peter Weir's work? Must check out...

I marvelled at the authenticity of the setting. It certainly looked like Jakarta. The faces, the atmosphere, the buildings, and yet, those scenes were shot in the Philippines, with mainly Filipino actors! Just goes to show the similarity among Indonesia and the Philippines.

I see now why this film was never made available in Indonesia (to my knowledge). The last few moments of the film show the stark reality of communist executions by Soeharto's new military regime, horrifying pictures of mere pawns being slaughtered... and the parting message from a self-confessed PKI member:"Am I stupid for wanting to change my country's condition?" is one of the best lines in this film.

Writing a two star review for a film that has an IMDb rating of 7.1 must look like spite, but let me make my case. Firstly, the plot line is confusing, quickly ticking off events from the book, without the viewer getting to understand their full significance. So we do not get to understand Billy's love of the Sigourney Weaver character, his bitterness as someone who has not had love reciprocated and thus his spiral out of control. We do not really get to understand Mel Gibson's motivation as a journalist either, only his romance with Sigourney Weaver. So, we do not really understand why he deliberately loses the swimming race with the British military attaché - (this was done to befriend him and get more scoops). This messes with the dramatic impact, meaning that we not only do not get to know the characters, nor the complexity of the political backdrop of Indonesia under a dictatorship with communist revolutionaries and Muslim generals. My second problem is with the casting. Mel Gibson and Siguourney Weaver are the fabulous looking Hollywood stars brought into attract an audience, but Gibson is wooden and wholly unbelievable as a foreign journalist. He overuses a cigarette as a prop as if that is the main characteristic of a journalist. He only comes alive when offended and given a chance for violence, (which explains his future casting in Braveheart/Lethal Weapon). Weaver gives a reasonable English accent, but the role calls for someone with a cut glass voice to emphasise how foreign her posting in Jakarta is. Similarly Linda Hunt does well as Billy Kwan, but why bother? With a billion Chinese on this earth why opt for a white female to play a male half-Chinese man?

I had forgotten what it is to inhabit the frame, that is to be immersed not only in the world these characters experience but in the sensations made available in it. To feel a draught of air or the scorching heat.

Peter Weir here in his best period reminds me again. His fascination in this period with the otherworldly is firstly Australian, that of a man awed by the mysteries of an alien, ancient landscape that trumps comprehension, outlasts our follies and dreams, then foremostly mystical, implying a communion with worlds beyond.

In this world answers are denied us, and we can only hear vague echoes of the questions we have asked. This is Picnic at Hanging Rock as well as The Last Wave and The Year of Living Dangerously, the tingle of excitement and fear before this enormous complexity to which we are only small and transient. The Hanging Rock here becomes Jakarta.

These visions of Jakarta, a veritable jungle of humanity teeming with passions and cruelties, he presents from a point of view that communicates alienation and fear. When our white characters venture out into the crowded slums, human misery reaches out at them with filthy gaunt arms. All this he doesn't merely document for the sake of political discourse, he stylizes as an experience meant to stir things in the soul. This also outlines Weir's limitations; that these visions are perhaps too tawdry, the savages noble and the gnomes magical.

All this in mind, the film is best experienced for me as a spiritual journey. But towards what?

A dwarf is our guide through this, an ominpresent being that seems to create the story we are watching, an avatar of the filmmaker's consciousness. He narrates our hero's arrival, then makes him see his limits by offering him his folly, the desire for an exclusive story. In a poignant scene early in the film, holding shadow puppets before a canvas screen, he reveals to him a fundamental tenet of Buddhist thought. How desire clouds the soul so that reality itself becomes concave.

This is not always perfect of course, Peter Weir is no Antonioni after all. Our hero eventually gives up the big scoop to pursue love, but this is accomplished through violence perpetrated to him rather than a personal realization that comes from having experienced the folly of the mind (which Antonioni brilliantly dismantles for us in Blowup). Lying halfdead on a filthy bed somewhere in Jakarta, he remembers the wise words of how desire blinds the soul, but is none the wiser.

He doesn't willingly give up anything, which is to say even if his precious tape recorder (the tool by which he records the world, seeking "truth") is snatched from him in the airport at the last moment, he has essentially lost nothing that he doesn't carry inside of him.

Perhaps this is the film's apogee then, that faced with a chaos and violence which outlasts them and reveals them to be small and diminutive, mere specs of sand in the cosmic beach, the characters of the film stubbornly remain the same, having brushed off that encounter only as an exciting, dangerous escapade into the dark side.

The weather reflects that chaos in Weir's films, acting as an agent of transience whereby the world is shown to be in constant flux and motion. But the characters are phazed little by this, anxious to pursue their desires and enact their little charades of meaning. When a tropic downpour suddenly rains down on them, they laugh and play in it.

But if Weir's fascination with the mystical is entirely white Australian, his cinema is elemental, Aboriginal. Here is the communion made possible.

The fact that he unerringly insists to submerge his characters in these impenetrable worlds that defy understanding, where the sole reward is a moment's glimpse of the soul in spiritual hazard, means that the glimpse is reward enough because for that moment the apparent reality is peeled back to afford us a gaze into a yawning universe beyond. This yearning for the mechanisms of the universe to be made apparent is in itself the primal, ultimate urge of these films. The Last Wave takes us on the brink and gives us a vision of apocalypse (a revelation), this one stops just short of that.

The Year of Living Dangerously had heaps of potential. It is laced with heaps of political intrigue and touches on themes of government transparency, freedom of the press, fascism and third world problems. Yet, unfortunately, it is mostly just a love story.

The intrigue is there from the start, leaving you thinking this is going to end as some espionage-type thriller, or freedom of the press and expression argument. There's a Killing Fields / Apocalypse Now / Heart of Darkness vibe about the movie which keeps it going.

Yet, all these go nowhere. The climax is relatively anti-climactic, and disappointing.

This said, the journey was reasonably interesting, even if the destination was so-so.

Performances vary. Mel Gibson is solid in the lead role. Signourney Weaver gives a decent performance but I found it difficult to think of her as English.

Linda Hunt got an Oscar for her performance because the Academy thought it would be quirky and historical to give the Best Actress award to a Caucasian woman playing an Asian man. Her performance was okay, but not THAT good. From the start you think "Isn't she a woman?", and that doesn't help the credibility and purpose of the character. Kept making me think we were about to have a (reverse) Crying Game-like moment...

The movie feels like a great job in overall. The story fits nicely in showing a reporter's story, both the drama, and adventures sides, with a hint of mystery and thriller sides. The characters are also designed quite authentically, having their interactions being natural enough on screen. But the main jewel is the background depiction. As an Indonesian I really appreciate this due to the movie did a great job in creating the locations that really look like Jakarta in those days. This happens on both ends at the high office buildings as well as the riverside slums. the extras and supporting characters were cast very meticulously, showing authentic Indonesian faces, whereas they're actually Filipino. Any Indonesian like me would quickly spot the weirdness of the natives speaking perfect English without the accent, which you can rarely find with natives even nowadays. The acting in overall feels also nice. Mel Gibson did enough to portray the drive of a young reporter to find his break, and Sigourney Weaver did enough also in portraying the undecided lover. But Linda Hunt really did steal the show as her character gets very much mysterious that incited the audience's curiosity.

I just caught TYOLD again on PBS, not having seen it for perhaps ten years. Wonder of wonders, compared to many other films of the early '80s, this one is just as riveting as it was when I first saw it and doesn't look like it has aged a minute. In addition I am picking up many nuances of the film that I had never seen before.

What I know, and knew, about the tribulations of Indonesia in the 1960's is contained in the reels of this film. The subject matter is so far outside of the typical Western/American perspective that it is amazing that the film got made. Gibson is very good as Guy Hamilton, and his performance is much more lean and energetic than what he has done since - he hadn't had years of Hollywood gloss and Lethal Weapon familiarity to file down his performances into the predictable boxes they have become. Sigourney Weaver is elegant, although her English accent is never really convincing and sometimes disappears altogether. Linda Hunt's portrayal of Billy Kwan is astonishing and won her a well-deserved Oscar in an incredible gender-switching performance that was inspired casting.

One thing I never noticed before was how Billy placed each of the three main characters in their perspective as the Indonesian puppets he explains to Guy. Arjuna, the hero who can be fickle and selfish (Guy). The princess he will fall in love with (Weaver's character). And the dwarf, who carries the wisdom for Arjuna (Billy Kwan).

I haven't much more to say about this film aside from how much I admire it and recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it. Beautifully shot, well paced, with good performances and about an interesting and important subject matter, it is well worth your time.

The film is wonderfully sensate, alive and filled with exotic beauty and deep passions.

The colors, textures and sound have a dimensionality that draws the viewer right into the scene, the place the time... when it rains, the viewer can feel the rain, when the hero, Guy is being drowned in a dream, the viewer senses the suffocation...

The chemistry between Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, as young lovers in exciting times, is breath-taking!

But Linda Hunt is the biggest gem in the movie, playing a little man named Billy Kwan. She is incredibly credible in this role. Few female actresses can believably pull-off playing a male character, but Hunt did it so well that, at first, the viewer feels a familiarity with the person playing Billy without realizing he is being played by a woman. When I realized it, I was totally amazed. Hunt is a great actress well-deserving of the Oscar she won for the portrayal.

The film is evocative and enthralling. And so alive, so utterly alive!

_The Year of Living Dangerously_ has and is everything a film should be.

I watched TYLD after a prof recommended it in grad school. I had to rent it from an obscure-movies rental place in Alexandria, Virginia and I now own the picture.

There are three elements, mixed together, that make TYLD superb, rich cinema. First, it captures the feel of westerners living abroad, the cluster of expat personalities that you find were you to live or work abroad.

Second, it is one of the best love stories ever crafted, with a "fleeting end of summer feel" between Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver. They are both young; Weaver is stunningly gorgeous. Their romance ends almost as abruptly as it begins. We've all been there.

The movie also captures an awesome historical moment and is fascinating Cold War history. The movie is flawless.

Only among self-absorbed journalists (is there any other kind?) could this be considered ''living dangerously."

Foreign correspondents who barely leave their hotels, have limitless expense accounts, and are focused on women and wine. That's not news to anyone.

Being posted in some over-populated rathole of a country that nobody outside of that rathole cares about, then or now?

Two beautiful lead actors who have a fling? That might have worked had their been any chemistry between Gibson and Weaver. Alas, there is none to be found.

Linda Hunt's character is the cypher. I get it. I still didn't care.

The whole thing is so hopelessly inert. Terrible when I saw it in a second-run theatre in 1982 and still terrible nearly 40 years later.