Fascinatingly enough, I found Banyu Biru as a gentle swaying film artisically surreal enough to wake you from commercial slumber. I admit that I hadn't seen that many Indonesian films to compare it to, but I was delighted to see that even our neighbouring industry could produce such an intelligible artistic film in a language that we almost share. Then again, it isn't about the language. Banyu Biru's running theme was about our waking life, and drawing a line between reality and dreams. In which part of our lives are we awake, asleep or dreaming? Even when we are awake, we dream of things we want... we need. And even when we sleep, we dream of things subconscious. Whether it is about love, our career, family or ideals. But do we snap out of it?

I remember back in college being told that writing a script ending in a revealing dream sequence only means you're cheating your audience. And that was a copout and uncreative way of constructing a story. But in Banyu Biru, the dream ending was essential and played out fittingly well. When in a film that's semiotically-ridden (I could go on and on with a minute by minute semiotic analysis on this one! =P), who's to say that you can't break a few rules now and then? ^_~ After all, the title is Waking Banyu... How else would you have seen him wake up?