Hamba kecek Kelante!

Bunohan (2011, Malay)

Dain Said, Director.

After hearing many rave reviews again and again about this Malaysian movie, produced by Universal Studios, I decided to give it a peek. It was a film done spoken completely in Kelantanese Malay and shot in Kelantan Thai border where beliefs of mysticism and spirits of the land is rife. This piece of nobody's land is a waste land where nothing much is happening. People cross the border at their whim and every guy looks like a bad dude. In fact there were no ladies at all in this movie except for an apparition of the protagonist's dead mother later in the movie.
One have to digest the whole movie in order to understand the flow of the story which appeared disjointed initially where everybody is fighting and is being killed ruthlessly.

It starts with Adil, a Muay Thai boxer, absconding from a fight, with his buddies after he injures his Thai opponent early on the fight (which he was not supposed to).
Meanwhile Ilham, a hired assassin, is summoned by the Thais to track Adil down and he lands in Bunohan, the village he grew up. He discovers that his mother's grave had been shifted unceremoniously. He is sidetracked to place his mother's remains at the rightful place.
Adil's father, a wayang kulit puppeteer (dalang) is visited by his eldest son, Bakar, under the pretext of caring for his ailing father. His ulterior motive is take over the ancestral land to sell it off. Things gets complicated when he discovers that his father holds steadfast to the promise he had made to Adil's mother to pass the land to Adil. Adil is soon revealed to be a illegitimate child to the puppet master. Ilham is the dalang's first wife's son who left Bunohan after the death of his mother.
As Ilham thinks twice of killing his sibling, his Thai masters decided to terminate his services and his life. Adil engages in another Muay Thai encounter, wins the fight but is poisoned and dies. The old man is also killed to ease the business transaction. The plot of land is soon sold and development is about to take place.
At one look, the story may not seem much. The plus point for this movie is artistic approach of storytelling. The cinematography is breathtaking making me wonder at splendour of our country. Of course, CGI helped to enhance the beauty of landscape and skyline.
The completely Kelantanese dialect used throughout the movie brought me memories of those two trying lonely years in Kubang Kerian. The idea of using this lingo, in my opinion, makes it more interesting and believable. The politicians may not be so happy looking at the lawlessness of this part of the country. Well, in any part of the world, be it US or China, parts of the border is indeed no-mans-land and a badland. 
The film has its followers in the independent film makers' circles and has enriched itself with many nods, mentions and awards.

N.B. With the talk of multiple wives and Kelantan, I remember my Psychiatry posting ward rounds discussion with SMR. He emphasised the importance of history taking including marital and extra marital liaisons as it had bearing on mental health. Taking to consideration that most Kelantanese men and women that we saw had illustrious marital lives, we asked him what was norm. In most cultures, more than two marriages were considered excessive. In Kelantan it was 6!

Kelantanese movie scene

In my previous entry, I did mention about watching 'The Untouchables'. That movie carries more than just the story says. I actually waited 24 years to watch it. The first time I attempted to view was in Kota Bharu on a Friday afternoon in 1988 during the final 2 years of undergraduate studies in Kelantan.

Kelantanese, the self-appointed stepchild of Malaysia, have many ancestral and cultural links with Siam (Thailand). During the local radio programmes, it is the norm to have callers dedicating songs and greetings to their close relatives across the border. They have their own peculiar ways of doing their rituals (besides the slang). Friday was and still is the weekend ( + half day work on Thursday).

To celebrate the end of term examinations, the students' entourage made its weekly trip to town to get some non-halal food. We used to term it as 'hypo-porkemia fix'. After the sumptuous Chinese meal of economy rice and the accompaniments, TFLG and I decided to watch a movie.

In honouring the Friday prayers, most business outlets there were temporarily closed between noon and 3pm. So, we had to hang around looking at the wheels go by whilst the ticket booths open. As the posters at the cinema advertised 'Untouchables', we excitedly got ourselves tickets. Usually, English movies only survived screening a solitary day in Kelantan, and we thought it was our lucky day.
Now, in Kelantan, there are some cinema etiquettes that one must be accustomed to before enjoying their day at the cinema. There is an understanding that different sexes are expected to be seated in different rows. The lights do not go dim when the film starts. The show begins with the mandatory screening of the portrait of the state monarch and the playing of state anthem to which audience is expected to be upstanding at attention. There is a short intermission but do not be surprised if you are rudely interrupted by flashing torchlight on your face in the midst of the screening. You see, they are not the ushers but moral police of the Anti-Vice Unit (Pencegah Maksiat, affectionately known as PM by Kelantanese) out doing what they do best.

Now that we got the formalities were out of the way, we thought we should be viewing Sean Connery, and his team do their job. There, in Kelantan, they do not waste much time with trailers and advertisements - they do not have any anyway!

So, on that fateful day, the screening started with er... what we thought was a trailer - one B-grade maybe C-grade butchered Italian R-rated flick with lousy dubbing and bad acting named 'Blue Island', not even 'Blue Lagoon'. And it went on and on until the whole show ended and the doors opened, that is it!
When we came out, the posters had all been changed to 'Blue Island'. Upon enquiry, we were told that 'Untouchable' had ended the day previously, but the workers had not replaced the posters!

The annual Kelantan regatta - Floods during the monsoon. One can see the joy on the faces of average Kelantanese during this time of the year - legal holidays, time to meet partners, indulgence in water sports and temporary eradication of the infamous Kota Bharu rats which is reputed to cow cats to submission, especially the fat rats around the General Hospital. (? after thriving on antibiotics and hospital supply?) [http://ummi-iman.blogspot.com]

Note: The poster showing '077 Espionage in Tangiers' -not even 007! Googled it and found that it is a spoof of James Bond, no mention of 077, though, that is Kelantan's addition!