The drums pound, the guitar drones, the flute splashes a chaotic layer of color over it all as the guru chants, the spirit addicts undulate, enraptured by their ecstatic trance, directed by the spirits of the Indonesian jungle. This vision of chaos that opens Wregas Bhanuteja’s magical realist folk fable, Levitating, sets the scene for what is one of Fantasia’s most eye-opening surprises of the year. A coming-of-age story about a young man following his dreams and the battle he fights to achieve them against all odds. A truly unique gem that utilizes familiar film tropes in a search for meaning against the pressures of modernization.
Bayu (Angga Yunanda) is a young man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. His rural town of Latas is next on the chopping block for local industrialists and the locals are signing their property away for a quick. Bapak (Indra Birowo), Bayu’s father, is among those ready to abandon their daily struggles for the promise of success in the big city of Jakarta, but that means taking Bayu away from what he loves most, the indigenous artform of spirit-channeling, the raucous practice of using music to infuse spirit addicts with the energy of the mystical local fauna.
This is all Bayu wants to do, Latas is famous for its spirit-channelers and the local guru, Asri (Anggun), has organized a competition which he must win, or forever abandon his dream and follow his father to a life of small business monotony. However, Bayu has a problem, in order to rise to the occasion a spirit channeler must clear his mind during the performance in order to keep the participants free of metaphysical contamination, but with all of these stresses weighing him down, he can’t seem to get into the groove.
As Bayu makes his way through the contest – often by the skin of his teeth and with the unwavering help of beautiful the beautiful Laksmi (Maudy Ayunda) – he learns that he needs to learn how to get out of his own way, and perhaps he can be his own savior as well as the savior of the town. A little bit Bad News Bears as the crew of potential spirit-channelers each express their own foibles, alongside a healthy dose of save-the-rec-center inspirational competition, Levitating upends expectations to deliver a hilarious and heartfelt story of a lovable loser who may be his town’s only hope.
Peppered with intensely vibrant sequences of spirit-channeling trance parties where the music and dance whip the on-screen crowd into ecstatic frenzy, balanced against moments of genuine introspection where Bayu and Laksmi depend upon each other for comfort and strength, Levitating is never less than wholly engaging. An audio-visual onslaught that feels bombastic at times, the film’s trance sequences mirror the chaos and conflict within Bayu in a way that allows the audience to feel his struggle, with director Wregas Bhanuteja’s illustrating each inner skirmish in increasingly comical ways.
A huge part of Levitating’s success is Bhanuteja’s ability to visualize the trance state for viewers who may be unfamiliar with the practice. Each spirit animal imparts a different energy to its dancer, the turtle, the lizard, the leech, we get to see each of their dances and more, but what really pushes the film over the top is the peak we get into the spirit realm. When Bayu’s focus falters, the spirit realm becomes compromised, leaving the dancers vulnerable to the outside world, the trance is supposed to bring peace, but if the channeler cannot feel peace themselves, the dancer is lost. It’s a brilliant way of demonstrating Bayu’s fluctuating mental state without relying on dialogue, and it’s often laugh out loud funny.
While your mileage may vary with regard to the volume of trance sequences – both in number and loudness – but Levitating itself feels like it is transferring its ecstatic energy to the viewer and we are just as much in its thrall as the dancers on screen. Bhanuteja strikes a careful balance between the boisterous on-screen action and Bayu’s moments of reflection and self-doubt, delivering an overall experience that will leave the viewer feeling both emotionally spent and victorious by the time the final credits roll. Definitely my biggest surprise of Fantasia so far, Levitating is a joyous cinematic happening that deserves all the accolades it can collect.