The East

In my opinion this movie missed an opportunity to teach the average viewer about a part of Dutch history which unfortunately is not very well known (and still is debated). The movie is well made, but it left me a bit disappointed. I am of Indonesian decent and was very much excited to see the movie because I'd love to see this topic getting more attention. But it is really a fictional story loosely based on factual characters and events. The central weight of the story lies with the conflicted protagonist and his relation to the antagonist which is only set to a backdrop of Indonesia and their fight for independence. It lightly touches some of the context and background but it has no weight in the movie. It may have caused some viewers to believe that this movie only wishes to show the Dutch were there blatantly killing innocent villagers. Although the Indonesians are almost portrait as Vietcong (yet you won't see any of them shooting even one bullet though). In fact, because the movie only shows violence coming from the Dutch the movie feels very unbalanced if you are knowledgeable about the actual history. I know this movie is not meant to be a documentary but as they have done a good job with visual accuracy I perhaps expected a Schindler's list kind of gripping movie in terms of accuracy.