Watched Bunohan the second time with M (Malaysian, Raja Yoga Instructor and Practitioner), F (Iranian, PhD candidate in Literature), S (Iranian, Documentary director) and Fern (Portuguese, Architect). And of course, K, my wife.
It was a Sunday evening, at Mid Valley. The hall was about 70% full. The weather was a bit cloudy but was otherwise fine.
This time around, I paid more attention to the architecture of the movie. I spent more time looking at the screen instead of reading the subtitles.
This post might contain spoilers. Perhaps some really serious spoilers. Read on if you do not mind.
From the beginning, the story is supposed to be a folklore. What happened in the movie is just “hearsay”. No one really knew what happened. This was made clear at the beginning where the guys sat in the dark chatting and we hear the real names of the actors being mentioned. That is the real world, or is it?
We are challenged from the beginning itself on what is real, and what is not. An existential question. Some discussions followed after the movie between us.
Essentially, this is a Shakespearean drama. F mentioned King Lear. Cain and Abel. Fern said the movie is very “European” in feeling.
Ilham himself is interesting. A cold-blooded assassin. But engrossed, throughout the movie, to relocate graves and to find his mother’s grave. And at the end, asked for his life to be traded with his brother, which he knew will not happened (I conjectured this romantic side of him). He knew his request to have his brother spared will not be honored given his experience in that dark trade. But he still asked. This is a great transformation for this character. Or perhaps he never changed. He was forced into the trade but how and why? He mentioned far-away lands, Paris, Marseilles. A romantic assassin who never left his mom and the memories with her. This is a painful man. A divided man. A romantic man. The magic realism moment with the talking bird is actually him talking to himself. His other half talking to the other half.
The use of local folklore, buaya jadian, hantu budak, etc. gave another layer to the movie, making the story-telling that much more interesting compared to a pure linear way of story-telling. It seems like the spirits knew everything. The spirits are themselves nature. I love the scene where Mek Yeh spoke to the hantu budak, on the songs, on love lost, on stories lost, etc. I read some critics saying the actress does not perform on par with the other actors who performed brilliantly but I beg to differ. I think the character suited her very much. She is the all yielding, earthy type of character and I think she played it well.
The cinematography is so beautiful, it is almost distracting the story and other more subtle elements.
This movie made me think of Yasmin Ahmad. I really miss her movies sometimes. Bunohan is of course not Sepet and Sepet is of course not Bunohan. Yasmin is like Ozu. Dain is like Kurosawa. But that’s just me.
Weekend Movies
I begin to watch more movies nowadays. That is probably because I have spent less time on Go now. Playing Go can sometimes be so frustrating. You invest so much time and effort in it but the results can be disappointing. And when you keep on losing, you really feel like giving up. But quitting is a bad word. Quitting is a sign of weakness. You can get away from it for a while, but you should not quit. You should not quit for the wrong reasons.
As is stated in the Book of Five Rings, the Fire Scroll under the chapter:
“To renew” applies when we are fighting with the enemy, and an entangled spirit arises where there is no possible resolution. We must abandon our efforts, think of the situation in a fresh spirit then win in the new rhythm. To renew, when we are deadlocked with the enemy, means that without changing our circumstance we change our spirit and win through a different technique.”
Anyways, here are the few movies that I thought is worth your hard-earned money that is still showing right now:
1. OVERHEARD (Hong Kong)
2. SETEM (Malay)
3. DISTRICT 9 (USA)
Hong Kong owes us a good movie. It owes us big time. OVERHEARD is one good one, although it cannot be said to be really superb. It is just a normal good movie, i.e. it is not a crap movie. The normal ingredients are there; greed, action, brotherhood, etc.
SETEM is a movie by Tayangan Unggul, my dear ex-company and the movie is good not because of sentimental values but is definitely a much more intelligent movie compared to the huge bunch of crap, ahem, locally made movies out there. It reminds me of BAIK PUNYA CILOK, only better. If you would like to watch a nice Malay movie, this is a good bet.
DISTRICT 9 is worth to be watched not only one time but perhaps two or three times. It is worth watching not because it is a big budget movie but because of the meaning it carries. It occurs to me more than just a few times how it reflects our human conditions although it is supposedly a movie about “aliens”. How we as human has inside us the seed for discrimination, of creed, of race, of greed and of class distinction. But also how, inside us too, there is a seed for great compassion and equality and a sense of justice. It is a movie very worth watching.
By the way, I am tuning in to Astro’s channel 110, a tribute channel to Yasmin Ahmad. SEPET is playing now. I have watched SEPET for so many times I lost count but each time I watch it, I am amazed by it. It is such an excellent, excellent movie.
The channel is quite nicely put together but it will be so much the greater if we can have RABUN, SEPET, GUBRA, MUKHSIN, MUALLAF and TALENTIME all together. I know the complications about rights and censorship etc. but it will just be such a great dream to be able to watch her movies freely, without all unnecessary interventions, just a pure appreciation of Yasmin’s vision and interpretation of the human condition, of a Malaysian’s Malaysia. Through her films, we can really and truly see that Malaysia is a great, great country and all the propaganda to make us feel less Malaysian, all those crap that makes us hate each others guts, is just so puny, so unnecessary and above all, so stupid in comparison.
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