Why Don’t You Get It?

This essay explores the relationship between language and mutual (mis)understanding in Candra Aditya’s short film Dewi pulang. The film follows Dewi, a young Javanese woman, as she travels from Jakarta to her natal home in Central Java to attend her father’s funeral. The tension between Dewi’s multiple and often conflicting obligations is marked by the use of language—from the colloquial Indonesian she speaks with her friends in Jakarta to a brief exchange with her English-speaking boss on the telephone and the various forms of Javanese employed ‘at home’. Drawing on examples in both Indonesian and Javanese, it is argued that the film’s use of language may be understood as a form of social commentary, reflecting critically on the complex and at times incongruous desires, expectations, and aversions at play in the lives of a growing number of young Indonesians.