Plot
Guy Hamilton, a neophyte foreign correspondent for an Australian network, arrives in Jakarta on assignment. He meets the close-knit members of the foreign correspondent community including journalists from the UK, the US and New Zealand, diplomatic personnel, and a Chinese-Australian dwarf of high intelligence and moral seriousness, Billy Kwan. Hamilton is initially unsuccessful because his predecessor, tired of life in Indonesia, had departed without introducing Hamilton to his contacts. Guy receives limited sympathy from the journalist community, which competes for scraps of information from Sukarno's government, the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), and the conservative Muslim military. However, Kwan takes a liking to Hamilton and arranges interviews for him with key political figures.
Kwan introduces Hamilton to Jill Bryant, a beautiful young assistant at the British embassy. Kwan and Bryant are close friends, and he subtly manipulates her encounters with Hamilton. After resisting Hamilton because she's returning to the UK, Bryant falls in love with him. Discovering that the Communist Chinese are arming the PKI, Bryant passes this information to Hamilton to save his life, but he wants to cover the Communist rebellion that will occur when the arms shipment reaches Jakarta. Shocked, Kwan and Bryant withdraw their friendship from Hamilton, and he is left with the American journalist Pete Curtis, and his own assistant and driver Kumar, who is secretly PKI. Kumar, however, remains loyal to Hamilton and tries to open his eyes to all that is going on.
Kwan, outraged by Sukarno's failure to meet the needs of most Indonesians, decides to hang a sign from the Hotel Indonesia expressing his outrage but is thrown from the window by security men, and dies in Hamilton's arms. His death is also witnessed by Jill. Still in search of "the big story", Hamilton visits the Presidential palace after the army generals have taken over and unleashed executions, after they learned of the Communist shipment. Struck down by an Army officer, Hamilton suffers a detached retina.
Resting alone in Kwan's bungalow, Hamilton recalls a passage from the Bhagavad Gita ("all is clouded by desire") which Billy told him. Kumar visits him and tells him about the failed coup attempt. Risking permanent damage to his eye, a heavily bandaged Hamilton implores Kumar to drive him to the airport, where he boards the last plane out of Jakarta and is reunited with Bryant.
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