Bag It (A Movie Review)

“What a documentary. I feel like being awakened with a little slap,” was the first thing creeping into to my mind after watching “Bag It”, a 2010 documentary directed by Suzan Beraza.

Last Monday on 6 May, my creative writing class did not come out as usual. Since our lecturer Mas Dalih couldn’t make it to the class, his friend Mbak Abmi took a charge of the class instead. Thank God, she said that we were going to watch this thought-provoking documentary entitled “Bag It” throughout the class.

The film shows us that the ubiquity of plastics in our daily lives has a great impact to the earth ecology as well as the whole beings on it. Jeb Berrier, as a host of this documentary, let the audience know how the production and usage of plastics today are considerably excessive. The plastics are omnipresent, and those are often merely used single time. Without considering the effect to themselves or their environment, people buy and use products packed in plastics, then just simply throw the bags away. What they don’t realize is, the usage of plastics could potentially carry numerous of serious disease to people. They also damage the earth biological life, to mention some in the documentary are the birds that died of swallowing the bottle cap, which made of plastics.

As a documentary, “Bag It” smoothly shows us a substantial issue of our environment nowadays: the matter of plastics as one of major global pollutions. The facts it presents are packed in an informative way that is eye-opening yet also entertaining. It wouldn’t be great unless the film is enclosed with the solution. Fortunately it does. This documentary luckily offers an applicable resolution to the issue it raised: by reducing the consumption of plastics, and use the other alternative instead. After watched this film, guess I’d better do something, start with a little part of my life, like bring my own tumblr or shopping bag rather than contributing to the more bunch of hardly decomposable waste on our beloved mother earth.  

Sajak Matahari

Matahari bangkit dari sanubariku.

Menyentuh permukaan samodra raya.

Matahari keluar dari mulutku,

menjadi pelangi di cakrawala.

Wajahmu keluar dari jidatku,

wahai kamu, wanita miskin !

kakimu terbenam di dalam lumpur.

Kamu harapkan beras seperempat gantang,

dan di tengah sawah tuan tanah menanammu ! 

Satu juta lelaki gundul

keluar dari hutan belantara,

tubuh mereka terbalut lumpur

dan kepala mereka berkilatan

memantulkan cahaya matahari.

Mata mereka menyala

tubuh mereka menjadi bara

dan mereka membakar dunia.

Matahri adalah cakra jingga

yang dilepas tangan Sang Krishna.

Ia menjadi rahmat dan kutukanmu,

ya, umat manusia !

Yogya, 5 Maret 1976,

W.S. Rendra

*P.S.: There should be a video of Cassiopeia's (my Creative Writing Class group) interpretation on this poem, but the uploading keeps ended up error. So terribly sorry about this. However the interpretation video can be watched on the other Cassiopeia members' blog right here or here or here (basically it's a group interpretation so the video is the same). Thank you for your understanding..

My Creative Writing Class

Approximately 4 days ago, Monday, February 18^th, 2013 was my first day of the 6^th semester. Okay this was Monday, the day of which a number of souls would still feel like cling onto the dear holiday. Admittedly, at first that was exactly what happened to me too. However, that was just a temporary displeasure. I remember then that the opening subject for that Monday was Creative Writing class. The first thing comes to my mind when I heard the word Creative Writing, I was like, “Great! This subject sounds fun. I should definitely take it”. Of all the choice of subjects in my schedule, at least I feel lucky I got this enjoyable one. It's like an oasis in the middle of a desert. The first meeting was already so good, even though the class was kind of quiet. Mas Dalih, the lecturer of this class told us to make a blog as an assignment. Well, this is it. Our first assignment was the writing of five senses. He taught us that creative writing is not about telling your readers, but rather showing them of what you actually want to say. It's like dragging the readers to your world of imagination: let them see what you see, what you smell, what you taste, what you touch, and what you hear. This Creative Writing class is indeed an alternative of escapism to free your imagination. Thus, from that moment on, I felt like I got my first presupposition right. This class is gonna be amazing.