In my previous review of Proletar's latest full-length—Depressive Disorder—back in March, I mentioned the band's 2021 album was a simultaneous release alongside of a documentary film spotlighting the band themselves. I also mentioned that at the time I was not privy to the film. So in return the band decided to remedy that situation and sent me a link to Grind For A Better Life in submission for review.
It has only been in recent years that any real cinematic interest has been paid towards grindcore. The release of 2018's Canadian encyclopedic love letter to grindcore, Slave To The Grind, as well as 2019's CURBY: The 20th Anniversary Of Obscene Extreme—documenting the establishment and operations behind the scenes of the world's premiere extreme music festival—gave grind fans their first real filmed discussion of the genre. Both are focused and funded efforts fit for the big screen and not just another cobbled together stock footage YouTube rehash of Choosing Death. Proletar's 2020/2021 Grind For A Better Life falls somewhere in between as an in-depth solitary dossier of the band and their storied career by and strictly for the underground.
Proletar and co-writer/co-director Diansyah Rizky, present an exhaustive compendium of the longtime Indonesian grinders that covers the band's ongoing twenty-plus years of playing, recording and touring. The documentary paints a picture of the band as local grind heroes that made it to the top of the Jakartan music scene through sheer hard work, dedication and DIY ethics. The chronological Grind For A Better Life oral history charts the band's early years in the hardcore punk scene through their evolution into the grind hybrids of crust, thrash, mincecore and goregrind via a series of crucial lineup changes. The actual documentary itself is made up of a who's who of talking heads from Proletar's past members, collaborators, producers, promoters and dear friends. Live performances and home videos are given the music video treatment via some quality visual effects and are intercut among the participants' dialogue. A cast of international musicians who have had the pleasure of touring or sharing splits with the band chime in to convey nothing but the upmost respect for Proletar and its members, along with respondents weighing in on their thoughts of what "grind for a better life" means to them personally.
Now, as a movie that comes in just under two hours and ten minutes and is made up of mostly extensive interviews, Grind For A Better Life can sometimes feel like it plays at a laggard pace. I think a little more conciseness on behalf of the interviewees or breaking up portions of the documentary into sequential chapters could have helped, possibly. But for sincere fans with invested interest in the journey of the band, the tediousness of the film will most likely not be an issue. My only other criticism would be the subtitles. The film is almost completely in Indonesian and the English subtitles are a little rough, grammatically. Not that it's too overly hard to follow, but it can take a beat to interpret. I'm pretty sure the subtitles are most likely auto-generated, which is understandable and was assuredly the more pragmatic solution with distributing a film like this.
Proletar are the real deal. They have committed themselves to operating consistently in the global grindcore arena under the banner of cooperation and punk as fuck principals, while also giving back to their community within Indonesia. As a westerner, seeing how bands and show organizers operate on the other side of the planet was enlightening. The love in this film is genuine and well deserved. My favorite reoccurring description of the band is that they are "not complicated." Which might sound noncommittal, but is actually everything in the world of dealing with bands. When looking at the documentation of the band's timeline of accomplishments, you couldn't really ask for much more. Honestly, I wish I had seen this documentary before my review of the Depressive Disorder CD. Proletar are basically the Agathocles of the Java Sea and navigating the sheer volume of releases with whom and when can be hard to keep track of. Grind For A Better Life is a sincere and earnest memorial to the band's legacy within the Indonesian and international grind scene. Definitely worth a watch for Proletar fans or fans of grindcore in general.
FFO: Slave To The Grind, CURBY: The 20th Anniversary Of Obscene Extreme
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