Oeroeg and the Dutch-East Indian Trauma

The Dutch writer Hella S. Haasse was born on 2 February 1918 in Batavia, then the capital of the Dutch East Indies. She has a sound reputation in the field of historical, often biographical novels.

Her recent The Tea Lords (Heren van de thee, 1992) was shortlisted for the ako Literature Prize in 1993. This is one of her many novels set in the landscape of her youth - the former Dutch Indies - the Paradise Lost recalled with such melancholy by the old Indies hands of whom there are so many in the Netherlands. Unlike most of these, Haasse never indulges in nostalgia for tempo dulu (the good old days), but tries to describe not only the magic of the country and its people but also the inability of the Dutch to grasp its true essence.

The Tea Lords is set around the turn of the century in a world of colonial Dutch planters who, according to Haasse, should be judged not only on their greed and exploitation but also on their achievements. This evenhanded approach is characteristic of her, and even at the beginning of her career as a writer - coinciding as it did with the birth of the independent Republic of Indonesia - it attracted quite some criticism. This was when Hella Haasse had her first breakthrough as a new young writer with the novella Oeroeg (pronounced ‘Urugh’), the story of the impossible friendship between the planter's son Johan and the native boy Oeroeg. The novella appeared in 1948, three years after the Indonesian nationalist Sukarno had proclaimed the Republic of Indonesia, and a year before




the actual transfer of sovereignty by the Netherlands. In the intervening period two Dutch so-called ‘police actions’ had created a great deal of bad feeling. Emotions ran high on both sides, and not everyone was grateful for Haasse's attempt to show both sides of the coin.

That ‘the Indonesian question’ can still cause a great deal of excitement over forty years after the event is clear from the suspicious response to plans to make a film of Oeroeg. Revelations about war crimes committed by the Dutch army during the police actions had already led to great consternation. When actor Peter Faber, Sergeant Van Bergen Henegouwen in the film, remarked during an interview that even Dutch soldiers had sometimes behaved like animals, the more conservative element in the population protested loudly against the film. They could have saved their breath. Director Hans Hylkema has outdone Hella Haasse in carefully balancing the points for and against both parties. The film Oeroeg begins where the book ends. Haasse's novel describes the friendship between Johan and Oeroeg, the son of the supervisor on Johan's father's plantation. They grow up together, they are close friends and, swept along by history, they see their friendship become impossible. Hans Hylkema presents this story in the form of flashbacks in the story of the soldier Johan (Rik Launspach) who returns from the Netherlands to the land of his birth to take part in the police actions. His old friend Oeroeg (Martin Schwab) has turned into a fanatical nationalist and freedom fighter. Throughout the film Johan is searching for this friend, aided by nurse Lydia (Josée Ruiter), his former childhood nanny, who plays an ambiguous (and not very clearly developed) part.

The main problem with the film Oeroeg is the rather simplistic approach to the Dutch-East Indian trauma, summed up by Johan in the comment: ‘I have a right to a place in this country too’. The flashbacks show an environment of oppressors and oppressed, with native children being taught at school where the Rhine flows into the Netherlands and learning the Dutch national anthem off by heart. When Oeroeg comes home with an excellent school report, it is commented that he will make an excellent accountant on Johan's plantation; Johan's marks were much lower. And on top of that, Johan's father (Jeroen Krabbé) treats his native staff with marked disrespect and indifference. His attitude is not even spiteful, it is completely uninterested. The mysterious relationship between the colonial and the colonised embraced so much more than this, full as it was of fascination, hate, love, fear and prejudice. Here it is developed in a way that is much too facile.

In the parts which are set in the present day, everyone gets the benefit of the doubt. The Indonesian rebels certainly do carry on rather, but their rebellious attitude is understandable. The Dutch behave like bulls in a china shop, but they are also genuinely hurt. Nobody is right or wrong.

The way all this is worked into a film shows that Hans Hylkema has outgrown the world of television drama. Oeroeg has the feel of a fully-fledged feature

film, with satisfactory acting performances, professional costumes, good camera work and rather unambitious but adequate editing. The scenario (by Jean van de Velde) is effective but not particularly refined, and the narrative structure using flashbacks is rather conventional. The film succeeds mainly in traditional terms, and for those with no prior knowledge it might lead to a better understanding of the history of the time. However those in search of detailed knowledge about the psychological mechanisms of colonialism may well be irritated by the film's superficial and over-explicit portrayal of externals. Oeroeg lacks repressed tension, mystery, ambiguity and absurdity, although these were the most obvious ingredients in the relationship between colonials and the colonised. It describes colonial history in the same rather schematic and straightforward way as, years earlier, Paul Verhoeven's Soldier of Orange (Soldaat van Oranje, 1977) had described the German Occupation of 1940-1945.

 

gerdin linthorst

Translated by Steve Judd.