McLean's great achievements — his distinctive, acerbic tone and keening broken notes; his inquisitive musical mind that led him to bridge his bluff, hard-bop bluesiness into the avant-garde (and to pick daring young sidemen to match) — are well known.
By the end of the film, "you see how the founding fathers of [Indonesia's] regime and establishment are completely broken," notes Oppenheimer, "These men are not enjoying their old age as the heroes they have been telling themselves and the rest of the country that they are, they're destroyed".
Minister of Home Security Herbert Morrison was also worried that morale was breaking, noting the defeatism expressed by civilians.
"Did you decide not to do the break note?
Buying four lottery tickets, he broke the note into forty-six one-rupee notestuffinging forty of them near his groin, he gave the six to the shopkeeper.
In all, the work has three distinct elements played simultaneously: the main melody, the continuous thirty-second note broken chord figures, and a descending eighth note motif.
