With a Single Click: February 2012

'Saw' is a popular horror franchise which is notorious for its gory scenes. The initially emerged as a short movie directed by James Wan . In 2004, the movie was re-made as a full-length movie, and currently there are 6 sequels which all released subsequently every October. Although the movies did not received rave reviews from critics, it actually gain monetary success at the box office.

Although this franchise is well known for its stomach churning scenes, is gore the only thing that the movie viewers, as in the ones who could actually stomach the disturbing scenes that can be found throughout the movie, really seek from these movies?

I was initially exposed to this franchise when a friend of mine challenged me to watch Saw III, and that was when I was still in the 8th grade. There are no official restrictions applied for minors to watch R-rated movies on movie theaters in Indonesia, which explains why a middle schooler like me at that time was able to watch it.

After I watched the movie, I was quite disturbed by it. But at the same time, I was really fascinated by it. The extremely gory scenes were edited out, which probably lessen the overall impact of the movie on me. I managed to see the whole scene on the DVD later though, and my opinion is still the same with the first one: it was awesome, in its own way.

The gore scenes, although it really is disturbing, never fail to fascinate me. The special effect team that were employed did a really great job on creating those scenes as realistic as possible. The actors and actresses seems as if they were really in pain, which increase the realistic impact.

Saw's plot revolves around Jigsaw, a covert serial killer who is being represented by a puppet doll in front of his victims. All his victims were caught for a reason. Rather than killing them instantly, he used psychological and physical torture to push the victims beyond their limit. Throughout the movies, the mastermind behind the puppet doll along with his motive for his crime, and his legacy which carried by his apprentices will be revealed slowly in an unpredictable way. There is always a nagging feeling on wanting to know whether this menacing legacy would eventually meets its ends or not, which keeps me interested with Saw movies.

The psychological aspect shown on these movies is what fascinates me the most. From these movies, I was able to see humans in a situation where they were pushed beyond their limit, mentally and physically. Such situation cannot be easily seen in our daily lives. The victims were trapped in a horrifying death device that would eventually kill them, either instantly or in the most excruciating way after certain amount of time passed if the condition(s) that were required to unbound themselves from the devices were not met. Some were determined to survive that they would do literally anything to escape death, even if they have to deceive others.

'Saw' is not completely a gore fest, although it is one aspect that appeal the watchers the most. Other aspects from these movies more worthy to watch, although you need to have strong mentality to be able to not skip any scenes from the movies.

Saw (franchise) on Wikipedia

"Cina, an 18 year-old college freshmen, was ready to conquer the world with a strong faith, yet naive, since it had never been tested by failure.

Annisa, is a 24 year-old college senior whose education was held back because of her career in the movie industry. Her fame and beauty left her so lonely that she drew a sad face on her finger as her companion. Until one day, another finger came and she was no longer lonely.

God (Tuhan), is the most unpredictable character. Everybody tries to describe Him. Everybody thought they knew Him. Every art tried to figure Him. But nothing is really like Him...or Her

Cina and Annisa love God
and God loves them both
But Cina and Annisa cannot love each other
because they call God by different names"

Cin(T)a is an Indonesian indie movie directed by Sammaria Simajuntak. It was released for public viewing in 2009. With our movie industry that is being heavily saturated with cheap porn/horror movies, this movie is definitely a gem.

Technically, there are some flaws within this movie. There are a few confusing scenes and how the story flows in a rather unclear fashion. But what I really like from this movie is because it specifically brought up a topic that no other movie director has done: pluralism within Indonesian society.

Indonesia, located in Southeast Asia, is an archipelago country populated with more than 200 million people.Within those 200 million, 80% of held Islam as their religious belief. The rest of the population is either Christian, Catholic, Buddha, Hindu or Confucianism.

Religion is always a big part in our life. We studied it during 12-year compulsory education, and we also have to state our religion in our identification card. It was stated in our philosophical foundation, Pancasila, to hold belief in one and only God.

Other than religion, we are grouped into ethnical group too. There are foreign descent citizens, which mostly consist of Chinese descent people, and local born citizen. Local born citizen are divided into smaller ethnic group, such as Javanese, Bataknese, Ambonese, etc.

At most of the time, there are no conflicts or whatsoever within our society. We all live within the harmony, right next to others who belongs to different ethnic or religious group. But still, some people thought that it was necessary to bring up those differences and creates conflict based on it.

Both religious and ethnic war is something that we are familiar with, since it happens quite frequently. In 2000, several churches were bombed during Christmas eve. In 1999, a war between Moslems and Christians occurred in Ambon, and currently there is a conflict between ethnic groups in Ambon. These cases were the ones that are well known, but there were minor conflicts between groups too.

This movie shows how we live within all these religious and ethnic differences. There is consistent conflict between groups. These differences affects individuals that belong to those certain groups. It is not unusual that those differences created a rift that was large enough to separate individuals from another, especially between couples. The love that was being shared between them was not strong enough to support their relationship, and forced them to separate.

As we living our lives, we became completely used with the conflicts. As the result, we don't really make any effort to do something. We despise it, criticize it, yet we did nothing to bring changes to our society. It was commonly viewed as a endless cycle; as long as differences exist, then conflict will exist alongside with it.

This brought me to a question that always puzzled me: is it possible for us to cast aside our differences, and live in peace with others?

I would like to believe that we could. We were too immersed with our group that we stop being tolerant with those who belonged to other groups. We were too proud, because we were taught that our religion or ethnicity is way more superior than others. We were being selfish, and we no longer possess enough empathy for others. It's easier said than done, but it would be great if we just think about other people for a while, and stop being too selfish.

I believe that if we pass enough awareness regarding our differences, people will eventually understand that it is okay to be different. Just because we have different opinions regarding God and have different skin color, we can live without causing any conflict. Some people just couldn't grasp the concept of coexistence, but probably if we give them enough time, they will soften up.

It is definitely a long, difficult road to achieve complete coexistence within our society. But if we are being stubborn enough to raise awareness, and refuse to give up, it is not possible to bring changes in order to create a better future for our society.

"Why do God created us differently, if God only wants to be worshipped in one way?" "That's why God created love, so all the differences could be united."