Gie - Additional Characters

Additional Characters

Ira and Sinta are two girls that represented the women in Soe's life. While in real life Soe did date several girls in the UI, Ira and Sinta in this movie are fictional characters because the women that were in fact close to Soe refused to make themselves known and reveal details of their relationship with Soe. Soe's diary mentioned his involvement with three women; however, it did not clearly indicate whether he was in love with any one of them.

Ira was an intellectual young woman that shared Gie's idealistic dreams and fighter's spirit. Ira was Soe's best supporter and friend and present both during Gie's productive and leisure activities. Subtle hints of romance seemed to spark between the two every now and then, but neither had the nerve to follow it through.

As the years unwinded, along came Sinta, an attractive girl with rich parents who admired Soe's writings. It was obvious that Gie and Sinta were physically attracted to each other, but failed to find the heart-to-heart connection. Sinta seemed to merely delight in Gie's company and the comfort and pride of being the girlfriend of a well-respected character, but did not have a genuine interest for the things that are close to Gie's heart. Vice versa, Gie was clueless about keeping Sinta entertained, and felt dissatisfied with the relationship. Sinta's presence caused a chill between Gie and Ira.

The romance between Soe in the movie and Sinta may be based on Soe's closest girlfriend in real life. She was the daughter of a wealthy couple who admired Soe's work. However, as the relationship intensified, the girl's parents began to find excuses to prevent Soe and their daughter from seeing each other because the parents did not want to risk having their daughter married to a man who was struggling to make ends meet financially and was frequently the target of hate speech and other threats. In the movie, however, there was not much parental intervention portrayed or suggested in Soe and Sinta's relationship--it simply features several (often speechless) scenes of Soe and Sinta which leaves the audience to draw their own conclusions as to what may be going on at the back of Soe and Sinta's heads.

Tan Tjin Han, young Soe's best friend, is in fact a fictional character. He is inspired by two personal friends of Soe, Djin Hok and Effendi. Djin Hok was the friend of Soe who experienced domestic abuse in his aunt's house, while Effendi was the friend who was abducted for his alleged involvement in the PKI.

Other additional characters include Denny (a humorous and outspoken friend of Soe), Jaka (promoter of the Catholic student union who turned out to only have used politics as a means of obtaining personal gain) and Santi (a prostitute introduced to Soe as the boys' attempt to stimulate Soe to do something about his potentially romantic relationship with Ira).