I JUST watched the film “Duan Nago Bogho”, written and directed by popular actor and comedian Sabri Yunus.

If you grew up in the pre-Astro and pre-internet 1990s, you would have known him from the popular 1990s TV show “Pi Mai Pi Mai Tang Tu”.

I’ll put my foot down on this: the film is a winner as it is a rare Malaysian film that balances all the components of art, culture, history and heritage in one entertaining package that isn’t cringeworthy. 

The story centres around the protagonist Duan – played with artful restraint by Asrulfaizal Kamaruzaman and his practice of mak yong, which is core to his identity both as a Malay and Kelantanese – crosses paths and forms an implied attraction to two non-Malay female characters played by Jojo Goh (my former student, I’m so proud of her!) and Sangeeta Krishnasamy as he makes a sojourn to Kuala Lumpur.

Aesthetically, the film’s non-art house facade belies the nuanced layers of the storyline, plot and dialogue in excellent blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments. 

The setting, too, is also rich in history and context: it’s not a coincidence that the film’s mak yong rehearsal and performance spaces are at the hallowed Rumah Pena in Kuala Lumpur that features literary and performing art heroes such as Usman Awang and Khalid Salleh whose names subtly appear within the frames.

I confess I was not familiar with Sabri Yunus’ directorial work until a friend brought my attention of his excellent telefilm “Pok Ya Cong Codei” in 2018 – “Cong Codei” being the word “Concorde” in the lead character’s Kelantanese dialect (KL’s Concorde Hotel is a central setting of the film). 

The telefilm spurned a recent TV series with the same title carrying on from the exploits in the original film. 

I won’t delve too much on both films’ story and plot (this isn’t a film review) but would like to turn the attention to the much-debated notion of what exactly is a “Malaysian film”.

As you may have noticed, both film titles are not in a familiar language if you were born and raised in the Klang Valley: both his films and contents are in Kelantanese and uses this backdrop and context as its narrative device and storytelling. 

Occupying the similar regional terrain as auteur Dain Said’s excellent 2011’s “Bunohan” (which to me is a Western with its themes of transgressions, border crossings), such films, to me at least, sorts out the aforementioned debate on Malaysian cinema because it is technically impossible to represent Malaysia’s diversity in the two-hour film format.

I say “technically” because one can’t force diversity into a film’s narrative and screen space without coming off as forced, something Namewee does well but with a very Peninsular Malaysia-centric bent. 

I feel that the best way to represent Malaysia’s diversity is to turn the magnifying glass onto the distinct regions, its communities and dialects from which the said diversity will emerge through narrative devices, which means paying close attention to the script and developing it with much care and love. 

This, to me, is what Sabri Yunus does really well and it shows. He is indeed an auteur for our times. 

This debate is commonplace among local cinephiles, academics and filmmakers and arose again to the surface with the recent premiere of the trailer to the film “Pulau”, which features popular model Ms Puiyi thanks to PAS as usual for its supposedly “pornographic” appearance whose statement even the Film Censorship Board corrected.

As much as this is just a form of political stunt – it worked and all media outlets ran stories about it – news of Michelle Yeoh’s Golden Globe win and Best Actress nomination at the upcoming Oscars stemmed the tide and stole the thunder away from PAS, for the time being.

There’s also debate about Yeoh and how we tend to collectively piggyback on Malaysians’ successes abroad without questioning why they had to leave to succeed in the first place, but I’ll save that for another day. 

While the spectre of Mat Kilau is still in the rear-view mirror (along with the marital exploits of its director in the tabloids), Sabri’s work and his insistence that art needs to be shared by everyone and not catering to just one ethnic group is proof that our artists are indeed holding fort and heading the right direction.

More importantly, its stories and context exist outside of the Klang Valley (even though it may be the setting) because we tend to forget that the Klang Valley is not Malaysia – it, too, is merely a region.

Hopefully, we will also see more Bornean films by Borneans soon too. – January 27, 2023.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.