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Indonesia Drive-in Concert Delivers Live Music as Coronavirus Rages

People watch a drive-in concert by local pop band Kahitna, at a parking area of the Jakarta International Expo, amid the coronavirus outbreak in Jakarta, Indonesia, August 29, 2020. (Reuters)
People watch a drive-in concert by local pop band Kahitna, at a parking area of the Jakarta International Expo, amid the coronavirus outbreak in Jakarta, Indonesia, August 29, 2020. (Reuters)
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Indonesia Drive-in Concert Delivers Live Music as Coronavirus Rages

People watch a drive-in concert by local pop band Kahitna, at a parking area of the Jakarta International Expo, amid the coronavirus outbreak in Jakarta, Indonesia, August 29, 2020. (Reuters)
People watch a drive-in concert by local pop band Kahitna, at a parking area of the Jakarta International Expo, amid the coronavirus outbreak in Jakarta, Indonesia, August 29, 2020. (Reuters)

As night fell in the Indonesian capital, pop ensemble Kahitna took to the stage for a drive-in concert nearly two hours long that attracted eager listeners in rows of hundreds of parked cars.

The eight performers played yearning, sentimental tunes, capitalizing on patrons' nostalgia for the group's 1990s heyday, with listeners honking and flashing their lights as the band launched into its hit tune, "Cerita Cinta" or "Love Story".

That was a reminder of the good times before the coronavirus pandemic brought the music industry to a juddering halt, said Chaeruddin Syah, one of the concert organizers.

"Our economy has declined for four to five months, we have not worked at all and have not made any money," Syah told Reuters.

"We hope this concert can provide solutions and inspiration to the entertainment industry."

Indonesia, which is grappling with a surge in virus infections, racked up its biggest daily increase in cases for a third straight day on Saturday. The Southeast Asian nation has tallied about 170,000 infections and 7,261 deaths.

The organizers of Saturday's event said they had prioritized safety, asking listeners to provide negative test results and wear masks.

The concert, which will be followed by another on Sunday, drew a crowd of about 900 people in 300 cars, all of whom had to stay in their vehicles.

Each car tuned into an FM radio channel to hear the concert. Each was sprayed with disinfectant on arrival, and received a carbon dioxide detector to alert occupants to open their windows if levels of the dangerous gas rose too high.

"This concert is an extraordinary initiative," said one listener, a 45-year-old who gave her name only as Emilia.

"This is really good, especially when we don't know when the pandemic will end."

A city of 10 million, Jakarta has recently recorded the highest daily increase in infections among Indonesian regions, and maintains curbs on public transport and businesses, although this week its governor said cinemas would re-open soon.

The adverse impact of the virus had forced musicians and their crews to adapt, said Adib Hidayat, who tracks music trends for the Indonesian industry.

"If the (drive-in) concept could have a strict protocol and a tight discipline from the audience, it could be one of the new breakthroughs," he told Reuters.

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So You Saw ‘Conclave’ the Movie. Here’s What It Got Right – And Wrong – About Real-Life Conclaves

This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Stanley Tucci in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)
This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Stanley Tucci in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)
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So You Saw ‘Conclave’ the Movie. Here’s What It Got Right – And Wrong – About Real-Life Conclaves

This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Stanley Tucci in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)
This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes, left, and Stanley Tucci in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)

Speculation surrounding a conclave to elect a pope is a time-honored tradition. But for the impending conclave following the death of Pope Francis, the ranks of armchair Vatican experts have swelled thanks to Hollywood.

“Conclave” the film, a moody 2024 political thriller, introduced many laypeople to the ancient selection process with its arcane rules and grand ceremony, albeit with a silver screen twist packed full of palace intrigue and surprise.

Though it has its critics, the film treats the gravity of a papal election with respect and accurately portrays many rituals and contemporary problems facing today’s Catholic Church. But Vatican experts warn the movie doesn’t get everything right.

Here's a look at what “Conclave” does get right — and wrong — about conclaves. (Spoilers ahead.)

Scenery and aesthetics The movie excels at re-creating the look and feel of a conclave.

“The film gets a lot right. They tried to reproduce the mise-en-scene of the Vatican accurately,” William Cavanaugh, a Catholic studies professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said in an email. “They show that a lot of the drama is around the preconclave conversations among cardinals.”

It’s not a perfect re-creation, according to the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior analyst with the Religion News Service and a Vatican expert.

He called the movie’s production values “marvelous,” but noted slight discrepancies in the cardinals' dress.

“The red in the cardinals’ garments was a deep red, while the reality is more orange. Frankly, I like the Hollywood version better,” Reese, a Jesuit priest who wrote “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church,” said in an email.

Papal protocols The movie aligns with real-life expectations for a quick conclave, said Massimo Faggioli, a historical theology professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

“A long conclave would send the message of a Church divided and possibly on the verge of a schism. The history of the conclaves in the last century is really a story of short conclaves,” he said via email.

Reese pointed out other discrepancies. While the voting process was depicted accurately, he said, the ballots are burned not after each vote, but after each session, which is typically two votes.

Holy plot holes There are a few particularly egregious errors that, if corrected, would lead to a very different movie.

A key character in the film, the archbishop of Kabul, Afghanistan, arrives just before the conclave with paperwork declaring the late pope had made him a cardinal "in pectore" — “in secret” — allowing him to vote for the next pope.

“The biggest mistake in the movie was the admission of a cardinal in pectore into the conclave,” said Reese. “If the name is not announced publicly by the pope in the presence of the College of Cardinals, he has no right to attend a conclave.”

Cavanaugh agreed and noted that while the movie's twist about the Kabul archbishop was far-fetched, it does point to a certain truth about conclaves.

“The cardinals do not always know who they’re getting when they elect a pope,” he said. “If the cardinals knew how (Jorge Mario) Bergoglio would be as Pope Francis, many of them wouldn’t have voted for him. Pius IX was elected as a liberal and turned into an archconservative. John XXIII was supposed to be a jolly caretaker pope, and he unleashed Vatican II,” a series of modernizing reforms.

Another of the movie's more outlandish storylines involves the dean of the College of Cardinals breaking the seal of the confessional by revealing to another cardinal what a nun confessed to him, said Reese.

“He committed a mortal sin and would be automatically excommunicated. Such an action would be egregiously wrong,” Reese said.

In addition to that, a cardinal paying for votes, as shown in the film, is unheard of in modern times, said Cavanaugh, and the politicking is exaggerated.

And so are the politics.

The movie errs in making cardinals into either liberal or conservative champions, said Kurt Martens, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

“Those labels don’t help us,” he said because cardinals are very cautious in expressing their opinions and “even someone we think is a liberal cardinal is pretty conservative by secular standards.”

And he added that even in an unusually large conclave like this year’s, the rule requiring the next pope wins at least a two-thirds majority of the vote ensures that “whatever we call extreme” likely won’t get enough votes.