"Sweet Dreams": Netherlands' Oscar Hopeful is a Ghostly Takedown of Colonialism

Colonialism dies a slow death right in front of your eyes in “Sweet Dreams.” The movie takes us to a sugar plantation in Indonesia at the dawn of the XX Century. Landmaster Jan (Hans Dagelet) lives the White European dream, which actually works out as a nightmare for everyone around him. The exploited native workers are on the verge of staging a strike. His wife, Agathe (Renée Soutendijk), spends her days stewing in the parlor of their ranch house. “A lady rests…the more slowly time passes, the more time you have. That is our privilege.”, she says at one time. Leisure has never looked more awful.  

Jan and Agathe barely tolerate each other. Perhaps because she knows he visits the chamber of housemaid Siti (Hayati Asis) every night. Jan is the father of Siti’s son, Karel (Rio Kai Den Haas). He dotes on the boy. The first scene shows them hunting a tiger together. We get hints that the political climate is effervescent, and things get even more complicated when Jan dies of a heart attack. The newly minted widow summons her son Cornelius (Florian Myer) from the motherland. He comes with his wife, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman). She is massively pregnant and temperamentally unprepared for the adventure. They think it will be a quick jaunt since they plan to sell the land and return home with bags of money. But things get complicated when the local notary reveals Jan’s will leaves everything to little Ezra.

It’s easy to see why the Netherlands chose Bosnian-Dutch writer-director Ena Sendijarević’s film as its Oscar hopeful. It won many awards on the festival circuit, and its subject has an aura of importance. The movie failed to seduce the Academy members but through no fault of its own. It’s an artful, mordantly funny contemplation of the wages of colonialism. 

Sendijarević’s original script presets this perverse social order as it rots from the inside. It could not be any other way. To visualize how divorced from basic humanism the system is, she opts for an artful visual and aural language that goes against naturalism. The almost square frame constrains coldly geometrical compositions. Anachronistic electronic sounds overtake the atonal score, contrasting with the diegetic melodies with which local musicians regal the Dutch settlers during their parties. In one of many ironic winks, a trio of Indonesian men play European classical music on string instruments - you might recognize some Vivaldi -. The other side of cultural appropriation is imposition. The players seem to care more about the music than the guests.

“Sweet Dreams” is most compelling when it contemplates the plight of Siti and her son, trapped in the no man’s land between two identities. The specter of rape haunts her bond with Jan. The one time we see them together, he invades her room, drunk after a party. Jan asks her to dance for him. This form of ritualized foreplay gives pleasure only to the man. She mechanically performs a silent routine, locked at the center of a barren frame - it reminded me of a shot of Hanna Schygulla in “Katzelmacher” (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969). With the boy hidden out of sight under the bed, Jan has his way with Siti. The kid can predict exactly when the man will achieve orgasm and stop rocking the bed. It is sad and perverse to contemplate how often this must have happened for the boy to know the man's routine so well.

Siti is seen as a lesser by the Dutch. She exists to serve, domestically and sexually. On the other side, her people reject her. For the other women in the plantation, she is so close to the oppressors that she might as well be one of them. The only local who gives him the time of day is Reza (Muhammad Khan), a handsome worker with deep disdain for the colonizers. He spouts a ribald putdown at Jan’s funeral, which reveals his irreverent nature. He loves Siti and tries to convince her to run away with him and live together off the land. She is not convinced. Too attached to the few material comforts she has in the main house - and perhaps concerned for her son's future - she plays it hot and cold with him. One minute, she seems excited about the possibility of freedom. The next, she puts him off as a nuisance.

The fact that Karel is heir to the family’s fortune may justify her choices, but she is unaware of it. Even worse, Cornelius plans to kill his half-brother to get his grubby mittens on the money. Meanwhile, the man virtually ignores Josefien, who is struggling in her new environment. The heat, the mosquitoes, and the ever-more-distant return drive her crazy. Lonely and horny, her eyes - and her hands - wander towards the charismatic Ezra. 

In moments like this, “Sweet Dreams” flirts with turning into an outright farce. There are missing corpses, surreptitious romances, and one uncomfortable episode of masturbation. Alas, Sendijarević seriousness of purpose keeps the mayhem tightly controlled. The characters oscillate between the symbolic and the recognizably human. Jan is colonialism in its dying throes. His eldest son, Cornelius, is the new generation living off exploitation and barely interested in keeping the system running. We can see Agathe is a spirited woman neutralized by domestic subjugation and poses a compelling contrast with Josefien, who has a little more but not too much freedom. Lisa Zweerman projects frustrated modernity in her role, even if her character is of a piece with the other colonizers. She is a talent to follow.

The movie comes to a head in a sorrowful, poetic epilogue suggesting we can overcome colonialism's evils only by generational change. Siti may find refuge in the “Sweet Dreams” of the title, but she belongs to a lost time and a country that will not exist anymore once the invaders leave. The damage is done. The ending is so well-rounded that I was surprised to find out that Indonesia did not achieve full independence from the Dutch Empire until 1946. That’s a good four decades later. One can only imagine how this doomed, brutal system went through a slow death and how many lives it destroyed in its wake.