Reel Estate: An Indonesian trilogy

BY JOSEPH FAHIM Cairo: One of the great joys of cinema is its ability to take the audience to far-flung places thousands of miles away from one’s home; to virgin lands unspoiled by the harassment of a world media operating in the cursory. Among the great cinematic expeditions of the new century is Dutch-Indonesian director Leonard Retel Helmrich’s Indonesian trilogy; a series of films chronicling the changes undergone by the largest Muslim nation on the planet after Suharto’s resignation in 1998 from the point of view of a Christian family. Spanning a dozen years, Helmrich’s tour de force examines the…