i am not a big fan of yasmin ahmad's films. i am not big of her technique, the long immobile shots and in some parts, i feel that she could have edited more, but chose not to. my brother asked me, after watching this movie, which also experimented with immobile shots and out-of-context scenes imposed suddenly on the audience, why is it we, malaysian audience, accepted what kitano did, which is the same exact thing as what ahmad did, only he did it way earlier than ahmad. so he set the precedent.
this is my answer. i accepted kitano's novel (at that time) movie making technique because i think it is a different culture, so perhaps that's how they do things over there in japan. i am not familiar with their culture so i decided not to challenge what he did and just accept his unconventional story telling. thinking that i know my culture in malaysia, i was resistant to ahmad's adaptation of other film making techniques because it puts my culture in a different light, which makes it alien.
she wanted us to examine the facets of being malaysian by making people see the same thing in different ways. and most of us are indeed, resistant to it, because we thought we knew, and yet, we didn't, not altogether. it annoyed us. it annoyed me. i wasn't annoyed of the subject matter. i was annoyed because i was challenged of what i thought i should have known.
she made me see a malay movie at the cinema. i watched talentime (2009) at a cinema in jusco ipoh. that was my first malay movie seen on the big screen.
