Friday July 7, 2006

First love

By ALLAN KOAY

It's all about places and situations. It was a Friday night, and the World Cup be damned, a small group of people were seated in a theatrette in Kuala Lumpur, waiting to see a rough cut of Yasmin Ahmad’s new film, Mukhsin, a tale of innocence and first love. 

Some members of the audience had been warned by Yasmin beforehand: “This is a small film. It’s narrative-driven. There are no deep meanings in any of the characters.” 

The lights went out, the film came on, and the first scene was of a classroom. There was Orked, a younger version played by Sharifah Aryana (10-year-old sister of Sharifah Amani), standing up and saying “xie xie, lao shi” (which means “Thank you teacher” in Mandarin). 

The audience did a double take. Wait a minute, what did she just say? Is that a Chinese school? 

Lead actor Mohd Syafie Naswip takes Orked (played by Sharifah Aryana) on a bicycle ride through a picturesque tree-lined path in Mukhsin.

Members of the audience familiar with Yasmin’s previous films would not have been surprised. Sepet opened with a Chinese boy reading a Rabindranath Tagore poem, then dancing to a classic Malay song. Gubra opened with a bilal’s wife preparing breakfast for her husband to the strains of a Hindi song. This now, surely, was nothing new. 

At the end of Mukhsin, there was no applause, no murmurings – a sure sign that everyone had just witnessed a very different Yasmin Ahmad film this time. 

The germination of the idea for Mukhsin began even before Gubra was released. One night last year, after a rough-cut showing of Gubra at the same theatrette, attended by some members of the cast, Yasmin whipped out a 20-page treatment for Mukhsin and handed it to Ng Choo Seong, asking if he would be interested in appearing in the film (“Only 20 pages, you can read it very fast.”).  

Ng looked daunted by the size of the treatment, but read on anyway, while Yasmin revealed bits of what would be in the film.  

She is in the habit of giving away certain scenes in a film but not what it is entirely about. Orked and family would be back, but this time, they are all younger. 

Just a few months ago, rehearsals began, as the actors had been chosen and Grand Brilliance had provided the financial backing.  

The mood in the compound of the MHz Film offices where they rehearsed was jovial and fun, so far removed from what Yasmin endured during the filming of Gubra, when, she revealed, tearful days prevailed because of negative reports about her in a Malay daily. 

“Siapa pencemar budaya?” (Who’s polluting the culture?) someone cheekily asked. Practically everyone present raised her or his hand! As they rehearsed the scene in which Anuar, the family driver, mimes a Nina Simone song using an aerosol can as a microphone, someone commented: “Pencemar udara!” (Air polluter).  

That mood carried forward into the actual two-week production in June. 

Setting the scene 

It’s all about places and situations. 

The place was Kuala Selangor, amid fields of luscious green padi. The situation: the first day of shooting for Mukhsin. The sun was not kind on this day, but the cast and crew soldiered on. 

On this day too, 13-year-old lead actor Mohd Syafie Naswip’s voice broke. In the scene in which he takes Orked on a bicycle ride through a picturesque tree-lined path, he uttered his line “Hello, how do you do?” in a voice that Yasmin thought sounded different. It was a moment akin to that in Hirokazu Koreeda’s Nobody Knows when the lead actor’s voice broke halfway through production. 

There was a lot of joking and laughing on set, and one could easily see how closely knit this “family” was, essentially the same people who had worked with Yasmin on all her films.  

She noted that someone who had visited one of her sets amusingly said: “How do you get any work done?” 

On the way to the location for the kite-flying scene, one of the most beautiful moments in the film accompanied by Mozart, I jokingly told Yasmin: “The same family, the same characters. Again, it’s about love. You’re a one-trick pony!” 

Yasmin laughed: “But it’s true what! Ozu also did the same thing!” 

Not only did Ozu Yasujiro use the same actors and family, so did Tsai Ming-liang. We wondered aloud if we should blame them for starting the whole mess. 

Time and memory  

Almost a month later, there we were in the theatrette, silent after witnessing one of the simplest yet most heartfelt films about first love. One member of the audience had eyes red with tears, while independent filmmaker Tan Chui Mui turned to Yasmin wearing a big smile of approval. 

If Sepet was a simple love story rife with drama, and Gubra was richly layered, Mukhsin peels it all down to the barest necessities. In fact, nothing much happens in the film, and the audience are kept detached from the characters by the non-intrusive static camera and the almost total lack of close-ups. But somehow you can’t take your eyes off the characters. 

Kamal Mustafa, whom Yasmin regards as her filmmaking guru, criticised the lack of close-ups, but her Japanese friends commended that aspect, noting that watching the film is like reading a poem. Two opinions from opposite ends of the spectrum. But the fact that Mukhsin is autobiographical and in a way, a visual reconstruction of Yasmin’s memories, validates the approach. 

“I remember the landscapes of my childhood more than I remember the people,” she said. “I remember the broken bottle that sank into Mukhsin’s foot, and the huge drain next to us, more than Mukhsin’s reaction.” 

I told her that everything I thought I knew about the film now seemed mistaken. “There is no wrong or right, sayang,” she replied. “Only feelings. The Japanese felt that the trees, the fields, the clouds, the sky and the houses in Mukhsin were every bit as important as the kids themselves. It’s what shaped them.” 

So it’s all about places and situations. But then again, by the end of Mukhsin, we might just realise we had also glimpsed our own memories of a past we can’t quite forget. 

Mukhsin will be released in cinemas at the end of the year. 

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