Catching Up to the Past (Three Weeks)



Whew! Time sure flies by fast when your busy dangling between doing assignment and honing the fine arts of procrastination. It's been three weeks since my last post, and alot have happened, Pn. Raja Rodziah have started teaching about the Malaysian film history in our MM&C class. New assignment have been given and several movies have been shown. (No shots have been fired, yet...)

Now, without further ado, let's start the recap. On week 9, Dr. Carmen have shown us a movie titled Big Durian by filmmaker Amir Muhammad. It's a mockumentary about the real event of Prebet Adam Mengamuk in 1987's Chow Kit Road. 

As a born and raised Kuala Lumpurian myself, this event that transpired 6 years before my birth is totally unheard of to me, and it's happening on the streets that I have walk past countless time. It seems like my parent's generation, the children who have experienced the May 13 tragedy personally have mastered the skill of repressing sad history. And it only makes me all the more curious.

Then on week 10 and week 11, Pn. Raja Rodziah taught us the five voices of Malaysian films, which starts with 

  • imported flicks (1st voice), 
  • to Shaw Bros and Cathay Keris bringing in Indian and Filipino directors (2nd voice),
  • P.Ramlee (3rd voice), 
  • Singapore's independant and the formation of Merdeka Film Production (4th voice);
  • and finally after the withdrawal of Shaw Bros from the Malay market in 1980 which give way to local production (5th voice). 
She also showed us two "fifth voice" film, namely Selubung (1992) and Bunohan (2012) during these two weeks of tutorial lessons. 


Directed by Shuhaimi Baba, Selubung is a movie about a woman's place in the modern society. It tells the story of Mastura (Deanna Yusoff), an educated woman who join a charity organization - Rescaid to help the as oppressed Palestinian trapped in the everlasting Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She fell in love with a handsome business man played by M. Nasir. 

Her sister, EJ on the other hand was attracted to the more fundamentalist Islamic way of life, dropping out of school in Australia to marry Harith Iskander (Brother Musa) who already have a first wife. 

Even though it was a film shot in the early 90's, it can still act as a social commentary for our society today with the revival of Islamic fundamentalism still growing strong and the right wing Israeli government growing righter (and wronger) every day. 

And one stray observation, the scene where M.Nasir shows up on the lorry to see Mastura, it was almost identical to the ending of Romancing The Stone.

The next movie is Bunohan by Dain Said. This movie is Malaysia's first official entry for the 85th Academy Award (read: Oscar) for the category of Best Foreign Language Film since 2004's Puteri Gunung Ledang, but it was not nominated.

It tells the story about three brothers who returns to their home village, Kg. Bunohan. One of them is a school teacher from the city who secretly wants to sell the family land and take the money for himself. Another one is the Muay Thai kickboxer who got himself in trouble in Thailand, and the last one is the assassin sent after to kill the kickboxer. 

This is a tales that explores the theme of greed and betrayal and it is done beautifully in a surreal manner, definitely one of the best looking film in recent memory. However, it is also spoken almost entirely in Kelantanese Malay, so an outsider like myself who couldn't understand the language had to depend on the English subtitle. Because of this, I might have missed some of the best dialogue in the movie. Too bad.

And with that covered, our recap has come to an end, that is all for this week's post. Hopefully, I will have something better to write (more substantial) in the coming weeks. Thanks for reading.

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