Tension-Ridden Proximity

In early 2004, at the beginning of my long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Balinese migrants in the Netherlands, Ibu Mariani, who went on to become one of my main interlocutors, generously shared her time with me to explain the intricacies of her everyday life. In order to understand Balinese migrants in the Netherlands, she argued, I first needed to understand the relationship between Indonesians and the Dutch. In her opinion, the best starting point was to watch the film Oeroeg (1993), so she decided to arrange a film screening in her house. She invited two other Balinese friends who she knew would enjoy seeing the film again. On a cold January afternoon, we gathered at her house to watch the film over delicious Balinese food.

Set in the Dutch Colonial East Indies, the film is based on a novel by the same name written by Hella Haasse in 1948. The film focuses on Johan ten Berghe, the son of wealthy Dutch plantation owners, and his unusual friendship with Oeroeg, the son of Deppoh, an indigenous worker. A pivotal moment in their childhood was the death of Deppoh, who drowned while saving Johan. Johan and Oeroeg develop a close friendship during their high school years, but this ends when Oeroeg becomes involved with Indonesian nationalists and rejects his Dutch friend who, for his part, goes to the Netherlands. Johan joins the Dutch army in the aftermath of the Second World War when the Dutch East Indies declares independence. Finding himself in the middle of the Indonesian war for independence, Johan learns that his father has been killed and is soon caught and imprisoned by Indonesian freedom fighters. In the prison he meets his former nanny, now working for the Indonesian independence movement, and learns the truth about how Deppoh had died. His old nanny explains that it was Johan's father who rescued Johan from the river. While doing so, however, he dropped his pocket watch into the water. Noticing what happened, Deppoh dove into the river to salvage the watch but drowned in the process.

While I was carefully trying to follow the plot that was unfamiliar to me, I could not but notice how the atmosphere in the room was becoming increasingly emotionally charged as my three interlocutors followed the plot that they knew so well.