Fit for the idiot box

With very few exceptions, Malaysian movies are just full of sound and fury signifying nothing

DISCERNING Malaysian film buffs have this recurring lament: why does the industry spend so much time and money producing flicks that don’t increase the cerebral folds a wee bit? Neither do they make us better than we were before we watched them. The quick answer is: the “Mallywood” (we may as well coin a word as none exists) crowd is pandering to an unthinking audience. If this is right, then they should not take any pride in their celluloid. Perhaps it may be too much to expect an Akira Kurosawa or Yasujiro Ozu to spring up suddenly. Filmmaker legends do not sprout like mushrooms. Their growth is more measured and paced. They are made of quieter stuff. They are what you may describe as having sober restraint. Their films do all the talking.

There are thinking filmmakers here, though just a few. U-Wei Haji Saari, Nam Ron, Shafiq Yusof, Mamat Khalid, Sabri Yunus, James Lee, Ming Jin, Chiu Keng Guan, Quek Shio Chuan and Prem Nath come to mind. Why the short list or the hesitancy, one may ask. But there are reasons, and cogent ones at that. Hassan Abdul Muthalib, a long-time film critic, and a Merdeka Award winner at that, has a simple reason: they just don’t measure up. In Hassan’s assessment, 95 per cent of Malaysian movies do not make the cut. Pedestrian best describes them. This may be harsh, but such are the standards that will produce a Kurosawa or Ozu here. There are movies and there are films. The latter are made by thinking filmmakers for a thinking audience. In Hassan’s book, a great film must meet three criteria: it must entertain, it must have something to say and it must be a reflection of the people it is about. We agree. And we echo the words of a French film theorist: the cinema screen is a window through which one sees the lives of others reflecting one’s own. As the late filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad put it in a video made for students of cinema: “It must be something more than the story about a man in the marketplace being rude to me.”

Sadly, our Malaysian movies are just that: stories about men being mad in the marketplace, so to speak. Consider Malay horror flicks. They are just badly made up celluloid hands trying to frighten each other. They have neither entertainment value nor something to say. They are just slapstick on celluloid. And they just leave us worse off than what we were when we went to see them. Perhaps these Mallywood people sat down to make the movies before they stood up to live, to put it in Henry David Thoreau’s language.

Local filmmakers see a big role for the reengineered National Film Development Corporation (Finas) in taking the industry forward. Nam Ron, the director of One Two Jaga, says Finas can help build theatre rakyat throughout the country where only Malaysian movies are screened. This will help blunt the stiff competition of Hollywood movies screened at commercial movie houses that often crowd out local flicks. Prakash Murugiah, whose first movie, Suatu Ketika, is expected to hit the screen in August is all praise for Finas for funding his maiden effort. If Finas does more of this, our great films may have the chance to be the rule, not exceptions.

In Hassan’s assessment 95 per cent of Malaysian movies do not make the cut. Pedestrian best describes them.