When the Western genre comes out of Indonesia, attention to its similarities becomes a critic's part-time job. Critic Maggie Lee calls Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts a "Satay Western" the way other critics would call a Clint Eastwood western an "oater."
But Leone and Morricone are there with lens and music, landscapes hot and desolate and music just as forlorn. Marlina (Marsha Timothy) alone out there, widowed, and visited by bad guys who want not her money and livestock but also her body.
From that harrowing episode comes a vengeance story different from the usual Western tropes in so many ways. Mostly it is a Western with a female as lead and as tough with a machete as Eastwood with a gun, and just as vengeful.
Marlina together with another feisty female, Novi (Dea Panendra), who is pregnant, places the patriarchal men in vulnerable territory. In fact the customs of Indonesia, Malaysia, and elsewhere are so vigorously male-centered as to make any cultural Westerner cringe. However, that seems to be director Mouly Surya's goal.
Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts will remind you of Tarantino's Kill Bill but without some of his patented irony. In both cases, a violent feminism seems just right given the offenses women have suffered over the centuries.
As in the great spaghetti Westerns, the theme music is haunting and the landscape forbidding. But most of all, the characters are strong and righteous, just the way #MeToo should like it.
