Yasmin’s Reluctant Critic – A Tribute By Mansor Puteh

By Mansor Puteh

www.mansorbinputeh.blogspot.com

Why haven’t I written anything on the passing of Yasmin Ahmad? Some friends of mine from the film industry were wondering. Here is what I have finally decided to do, to please them, and to also pay a tribute to her although I regretted having to do it too soon, despite our personal creative differences.

The reason being, many who have written personal tributes and worse – cry on her grave did not know her personally, other than as a personality in the film industry. One veteran actor was seen on television crying but not saying anything specific. You can expect to get this sort of act from the same person with the death of another film director or artiste in the future.

The reason being he did not know Yasmin at all or had seen any of her films and also attended the forum she spoke at Finas, twice, when I was also a panelist. Now he was seen crying and getting on national television.

And suddenly Yasmin became ‘hot’ again. It is pitiful how some people would go out of their way to now pay a tribute to her, as she lies in her grave; yet, when she was producing films, the multinational companies and other individals ignored her. Her films were not getting the right crowd with each film she made, with her last offering, ‘Talentime; not attracting the viewers’ time. In simple words, this film failed at the box office.

And her earlier film, ‘Muallaf’ was edited a litle but has not been screened in the country.

Yasmin got ‘rave reviews’ and many pages were devoted on her in the papers. Philosophically speaking: Are the editors happy that she had died so soon, now than before? They and their papers only have accolades for Malaysian artistes who die, but not those who are still struggling and in need of some attention and publicity.

Yasmin knew her viewers were not the Malays who had seen enough of her style and substance in ‘Sepet’ and she could only impress the non-Malays to come to see her films. But they came in trickles and not droves.

She produced films which taunted the Malays and even belittle some of our personal beliefs, too. And I am not saying this for fun; I had said and written about it on many occasions.

As an act of rebellion, she removed her ‘tudung’ which she had been wearing for many years, even while being in the crowd of advertising people, who have not been known to fancy such attire by their Malay female staff.

But at the same time, she tried to tone down her disgust and tried to play with the gallery but still failed.

There’s no point in lying just because we have to be reasonable to those who had died. We also have the responsibility to be reasonable to those who are still alive.

I got to know Yasmin Ahmad when she came to me trying to get my personal support for her type of films, at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) where I was a speaker in a film forum which she also attended. That was the first time we met.

I got to know her even better but not as a person who appreciated her work, but as someone who could teach her a thing or two, which she managed to accept albeit with a lot of reluctance and repulsion.

I got a SMS from a friend in Malaysia when I was in England last week, which shocked me a bit. And the moment I landed at the LCCT I got another SMS from a stranger whose number I did not have, informing me that Yasmin had died and her burial was going to be held later in the day after ‘zohor’.

No I did not want to feel guilty for having cricitized Yasmin’s films for what the others thought they were, as I was seeing films these days, first as a Muslim and second as a filmmaker and critic.

So with a bit of trepidation I set out to correct some of Yasmin’s creative flaws, knowing how she did not have formal training in film and was just experimenting with a concept which she thought was new, but which was not – the Bangsa Malaysia or Muhibbah concept.

Basically her films have stories which seem to be too far-fetched and contrived. I learnt the word ‘contrived’ for the first time in the Screenwriting 1 course at the university in New York City where I was majoring in film. It is one of the few words which is very useful if one wants to write screenplays better.

Her’s is the world of make-belief Was she disillusioned with her own special world, and those of the others around her? Why so much sentimentality? There was no humanity, only scorn and contempt which she poured in her film with care for the sensitivities of others. No wonder the Malays despise her films.

Yet, she has been hailed as a promoter of Bangsa Malaysia, like those amatuer film critics do no have other valid way to describe her works.

Her films are nothing but long Petronas festival videos, and especially the clip on the two schoolchildren, the boy a Chinese and the girl, Malay, which is too crude to be shown on television to promote Petronas. It is better suited to promote the use of condoms amongst lower primary students!, as what I had often described it.

Haven’t we gone beyond the level of saying ‘how come the Malay boy is with the Chinese girl’ and vice versa? Is it good to be reminded of that like we are still nowhere we are now and we still need to be reminded of it? Maybe she thought we were.

I have left this stage or phase long ago, so I did not find it interesting to have to be taken back, say, twenty years back, just to enjoy her films.

And she may be right if one sees in the present political context where so few Malays, Chinese and Indians seem to dominate the everyday consciousness of the Malaysian citizentry. They make news for the wrong reasons, which are all related to race relations, or the lack of it.

We did sit in the same forum to discuss her second film called ‘Sepet’ at Finas where she immediately ran away without greeting me after it was over, feeling aghast at what I had said of her film.

Clearly she did not want to be taught on how to make better films and was only interested to preach her thoughts to everybody. So no wonder many have been taken by her innocence and sudden appearance in the film scene in the country.

I had made it known publicly on many occasions how I was not pleased to see her ‘award-winning’ public service films especially the on on the two school kids of different races, which I thought was suitable for the campaign to promote the use of condomns by young primary schoolchildren whom she had guided to say things which even adults will find hard to say. They do not reveal their personal characters, but that of the interviewer.

P Ramlee had tried to do that, but it was in such an earlier time before film criticism and apppreciation became a central feature of the film industry in the country.

I also did it with ‘Kadir dan Kim’ which was produced by TV3 as their second television feature, where I had a group of Melaka Babas and Nyonyas in the lead with a Malay man as their family driver.

Again, because I wrote the script for this production I could explain the concept. I have grown out of this limited confine and am now trying to put Malaysia and Malaysians in the global concept. It can be seen in my forthcoming feature film, ‘Malaysian Snow’ which I hope to shoot mostly in Nottingham in England.

I was there to scout for the locations for this film and am happy that this ‘university of kings and prime ministers’ of Malaysia has agreed to support my effort.

And it is also my master’s degree thesis film for my university in New York City.

The other difference I had with Yasmin is that she had entered the advertising industry without any formal training in this specialization, while I had a degree in it.

But both of us studied in different Catholic missionary schools in Melaka, with her studying at the St Paul’s Instution while I studied at the better known and recognizable St Francis’ Institution.

I did however, pass St David’s Institution on many afternoons to go to ‘ugama’ classes in Bukit Baru where her school was.

I felt pity for Yasmin, regardless for the sudden surge in interests in her small body of work which did not grow in the positive direction too fast, as she was still grappling with her earlier emotions which she had tried to conceal, which I could manage to reveal, but which I am not interested to reveal what they are.

They are there in the film, but not surprisingly, no one seems to be able to see them.

About Mansor: He defies common sense and logic, and goes beyond the realm of fantasy; will be the only person in the world to publish the 60 titles of books in many genres he has already written, in Malay (Melayu) and in English, in a special world record edition. Most of them are novels about Malays and other Muslims set in many of the 33 countries he has visited. ‘It was easy to write them because they are about us who have not been adequately written about.’ He graduated from Mara Institute of Technology (Now Mara University of Technology in Malaysia (UiTM)), with a degree in Advertising, worked as a journalist for a year before pursuing his MFA in Film Directing at Columbia University, New York City. US President Obama came to the university as a freshman when he was in his last semester. On Malaysia Day in September, he will be donating blood 300 times!