Streaming Review: Bali 2002
Streaming Review: Bali 2002
1 October 2022
Image courtesy Stan.
The historical drama revisits the trauma of terrorism with a true-crime approach, but does it help or hurt?
We use story to make sense of our pain, and we can rely on media and entertainment to process collective trauma. This October marks the 20th anniversary of the terrorist bombings in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali when 88 Australians were killed at the sites of popular nightclubs. The tragic events are retold in the Australian-Indonesian historical drama series Bali 2002.
Australian actor Richard Roxburgh (left) plays the role of police investigator Graham Ashton in the series.
The 20-year anniversary of the attacks in Kuta has been in the public’s consciousness of late, with the Australia Federal Police releasing a documentary-style podcast series about the bombings. Bali 2022 depicts the attacks and their aftermath, featuring Rachel Griffiths, Richard Roxburgh, Arka Das and Anthony Brandon Wong in the four-part series.
The opening episode introduces us to a British couple on honeymoon, two Australian friends on holiday, a local Kuta couple, and the terrorists preparing for the attack. Once the bombs are detonated, these characters are engulfed in flames, and the dramatised aftermath is intercut with actual news footage of the destruction. The series follows the recovery of the survivors and the Australian investigator (Richard Roxburgh) who travels to Bali to search for those responsible and identify the motifs behind the horror.
The scenes of people on fire, panicking, bleeding and missing limbs are frequent, with one plot thread following a doctor and plastic surgeon (Rachel Griffiths) treating the scarred and wounded. We can sometimes experience past traumatic events as reemergent memories when painful events come to mind over time. Alternatively, we can choose to revisit traumatic experiences as a form of exposure therapy, deliberately facing the things that have caused us hurt. With the bombings now decades in the past, are the grisly moments of Bali 2002 a painful memory now safely emerging in the collective consciousness, a deliberate form of exposure therapy, or something else altogether?
Netflix’s true-crime series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story recently attracted criticism from the relatives of the killer’s victims for retelling the horrific events without their consent and effectively re-traumatising the families. Bali 2002 was reportedly developed in consultation with those directly affected, but some survivors have expressed unease with the series, and the production functions as an example of the true-crime genre.
In a scene depicting the chaos of a local emergency room following the attack, one survivor pushes the media cameras away and shouts, “there are people dying in here, their families can’t see them like this!” The moment is revisited again in the second episode, and the sentiment is repeated in other scenes. Moments like these draw uneasy attention to the production itself. Two decades after 202 people died and many more wounded, Bali 2002 continues to put cameras on the trauma and turns terrorism into another true-crime show for streaming.
For some, Bali 2002 may be a helpful way to understand a tragic event in our recent past. For others, it may lack the depth to process trauma in helpful ways, more exploitation than exposure therapy. The series is engaging enough, building sympathy for the survivors and a degree of momentum through the investigation plot, but whether Bali 2002 can make sense of people’s pain remains to be seen.
Bali 2002 premiered on Stan on 25 September
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