Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources [distributor], 2020. 1 video resource (82 mins.) In Toraja, Indonesian with English subtitles.
This visually stunning film, based on years of ethnographic research, examines ritual speech and spiritual transformations in the Toraja highlands on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. To showcase this story, the filmmaker—ethnomusicologist Dana Rappoport—spotlights the life of Lumbaa, whom she first met in 1993. Lumbaa was a “speech master” from the Toraja spiritual tradition known as Aluk to Dolo (Ways of the Ancestors). The name of the film derives from the Toraja term for these gifted ritual poets and ceremonial priests, to minaa (“the one who knows”). Lumbaa passed away in 2018 and the film is bracketed by haunting scenes from his deathbed and funeral. The film opens with a lingering shot of his wife and another family member engaged in anguished Toraja-style keening over Lumbaa’s textile-enfolded body, which lies on a bed inside the family’s home. The film closes with scenes from his funeral ritual, culminating with the insertion of his coffin into a hillside tomb. Not surprisingly, the filmmaker’s opening words in the narrative voiceover signal a story of loss. As she tells us, “This is a story of a world that’s going to die. That has no more mouths to tell it, no more wiggling tongues to sing it.”
Via a montage of older photographs and more recently filmed segments, the film traces the Church’s and Indonesian government’s encroachment on rural Toraja life. Although missionaries arrived in the early part of the 1900s, pressure to convert to a world religion mounted after Indonesian independence, when the state made belief in a sole god (rather than multiple deities and deified ancestors) a requirement for its citizens. Although Lumbaa had already converted to Christianity at the time of the filming, viewers are offered glimpses of the spiritual, ritual, and poetic dynamics of the old ways via recollections, audio-recordings, and archival photos. We also witness Lumbaa’s ever-dwindling prestige in the community as his generation of Aluk to Dolo adherents pass away or convert to Christianity. After he converts to Pentecostalism, Lumbaa continues to be asked to come to Christianized rituals, but it is Christian priests and pastors whose words now dominate, and his masterful poetic verse is sidelined, at best.
I remember Lumbaa from my initial field research years in the Toraja highlands (1984–1985), and he was a commanding presence, even at Christian rituals in that era, so I found the story anchoring this film profoundly moving. The ritual poetry, everyday village soundscapes of crickets, birds, and frogs, as well as the leisurely scenes of everyday village life (people sweeping and hanging laundry, babies crying, etc.) beautifully capture the often slowly unfolding pace of everyday life in the rural hinterland areas of the Toraja highlands. Although the film’s pace may be slow for undergraduates accustomed to fast-moving plotlines, ethnographers of Indonesia will find it richly evocative.
The film also documents Rappoport’s effort to foster cultural preservation by bringing together Lumbaa and Yans, a Catholic priest interested in Toraja orality and the wisdom of the ancestors. Later in the film, we see scenes from a conference on Toraja culture that was attended by local elders, anthropologists from around the world, and government officials, and which prompted animated discussions (although the context of these discussions is not entirely clear in the film).
Occasionally, the voiceover’s tone teeters on terrain that seems overly pessimistic. It may be a bit too soon to declare that the Toraja world of Aluk to Dolo is perishing with Lumbaa and the last one or two other To Minaas of his generation. On recent visits, I’ve encountered several younger Toraja men who have converted from Christianity to Aluk to Dolo, and one who is studying to become a To Minaa (via his To Minaa grandfather), and I’ve also met younger Toraja artists and intellectuals who are avidly researching the Ways of the Ancestors, including perusing older anthropological volumes with transcriptions of Toraja ritual poetry. Although how they enact the Ways of the Ancestors may end up differing from that of Lumbaa and his generation, is not change a constant factor in cultural rites and practices?
Clocking in at 82 minutes, the film is rather long for classroom use. It also lacks some of the orienting features typically found in undergraduate classroom films (for example a map and explanations of some funeral-related scenes that are likely to puzzle those without prior knowledge of Toraja cultural practices). One hopes that a shorter version with more contextualization will soon be produced, as the material merits inclusion in undergraduate classes.
In sum, this film is best approached as an ethnographic document, one that will be of great interest and appeal to scholars of Indonesian religious practices, and those who study Southeast Asian or Pacific ritual language and poetic verse. It will also prove a tremendous gift to future Toraja generations, given its rich footage of Toraja ritual poetry and its documentation of the spiritual life of one of the gifted To Minaas of the Toraja highlands.
Kathleen M. Adams
SOAS, University of London and Loyola University, Chicago