Former stage actor Slamet Rahardjo made his debut as writer-director with Moon and Sun, first released in 1980. This modern-day legend tells of a pimp in Jakarta's underworld who, having had enough of the life, decides to leave his witty prostitute girlfriend, Paitun, and return to his native village. Having left the village under a cloud of ignominy after impregnating his young girlfriend, Wong Bagus (Djago Sasongko) intends to atone for the sin of upsetting the balance of rural life by helping rid the hamlet of extortionists preying on the needs of the impoverished villagers. He is followed in short order by Paitun, whose city ways provide no little comedy in the small hamlet until she finally doffs her high heels, peels off her lipstick and settles into another life. Franki Raden, who composed the film score, has noted that "Rembulan dan Matahari artfully weaves surreal cinematic sequences, symbolic expressions relating to traditional Wayang puppet plays, and Indonesian myths with the rhythms of everyday village life. The result is a sense of Javanese life being a timeless, layered integration of traditional spiritualism, magic and reality." Wong Bagus' realization that man should live like the moon and the sun-and that atonement can achieve this harmony-comes less as a moral to the fable than as a wistful expression of Slamet Rahardjo's own beliefs as a youth. For also like the sun and the moon, youth and maturity circle round each other all one's life.