DECEMBER 14 — The original plan was to start doing my 2024 year-end lists this week, as I’ve often done here in previous years.
But sometimes an occasion so rare arises that those lists can wait another week, which is what exactly happened this week.
That rare occasion is the arrival of not just one, but two pretty good Malay movies in Malaysian cinemas within just a week of each other.
Yes, I know, the stereotype or largely held belief among most Malaysians is that local films are mostly bad, and I can’t really argue with that because a lot of them are actually quite terrible, especially the ones supposedly hoping for commercial success.
The general approach to achieving this has mostly been to pander to the lowest common denominator, resulting in films so basic that even the target audience will get turned off once they see the trailers.
If you’ve been following the release of Malaysian films in the last two years or so, you’d have noticed a general uptick in quality in quite a number of Malaysian films, even the ones that are gunning for commercial success.
Solid screenplays might still be an issue, but technical proficiency in other areas like art direction, cinematography, sound design and editing have made more than a few Malaysian films of recent vintage quite watchable.
And now we have two new Malay language films, one clearly a mainstream product as it’s sort of a hybrid sequel-prequel of a hugely popular TV series, and the other a small and heartfelt independent production, both quite accomplished in setting out to achieve what they want.
I’d say go see both of them if you’ve got the time.
Kahar: Kapla High Council
The Project: High Council TV series was a phenomenon when it was released a couple of years back, making instant stars out of its young cast and even causing K-pop levels of pandemonium when a meet and greet session was held in KLCC to promote the series.
It would be foolish, maybe even negligent, for the producers not to think of a way to continue this story of a bunch of teenage boys growing up in an elite boarding school, and getting involved with the school’s tradition of gangsterism.
And so, we now have this movie, which follows the series’ main antagonist Kahar (played here by the same actor, Amir Ahnaf), initially after the events at the end of the TV series, which is the film’s framing device, which then goes into extensive flashbacks in order to show how Kahar became the Kahar that we all loved to hate in the TV series.
This is why I called it a sequel-prequel hybrid because technically this movie happens after the series, but the extensive flashbacks surely make this one a prequel (and origin story) as well.
The basic story has strong echoes of the TV series, as Kahar enters Kolej Ungku Deramat (aka KUDRAT) as a junior and gradually gets himself involved with the school’s gangsterism tradition, in which the organization is called High Council, the leader is called Kapla, and there are elections, manifestos and even coup d’etats provided in their rules.
Director Razaisyam Rashid lays out all of this very clearly, so that even a newbie into the world of KUDRAT would have no problem following things here.
What makes this one of the best Malaysian films of 2024 is how the film balances its commercial elements, in which the fangirls get to see a lot of shirtless boys, and in which the fanboys get to see the boys duke it out in some of the best and most intense fight scenes you’ll see in a local film this year, with the high melodrama of the characters’ interpersonal relationships.
It’s not subtle, but it’s one of the most emotionally powerful Malaysian films you’ll see this year.
Babah
If Kahar: Kapla High Council felt like an expertly executed attempt to cash in on a hot property, which is nothing wrong in my book, as mainstream films, especially good to great ones, have their own place in the world of filmmaking, Babah almost felt like someone is telling you a small, private story.
It’s a deliberately small film, focused on a small family of three, especially on the bond between the father, Babah (a superb Qi Razali) and daughter Maya (played by various actors when she was a kid, with most of the screen time as an adult played by Sweet Qismina, also pretty good).
We get to witness their growth as a family all the way back from the 1990s to the present day, so we’ll get to see the usual things in films like this like the family’s hardships, the daughter’s first period, her rebellious teenage years and the kind of hurt and emotional scars that this can bring.
Where things are slightly different here is that Babah, who wears a hearing aid during the early parts of the film, will turn fully deaf as the film goes on.
It’s a tearjerker that, despite the seemingly epic nature of the many periods it covers, is kind of slight story-wise.
As I said before, this one feels deliberately small and personal, and probably even contains elements from the private or family life of writer Wan Rafiq Fadzly.
There’s actually very little drama or high stakes involved, and it feels more like a chronicle of life events saved up in a private diary, but it’s in how personal all this feels that the film derives its emotional power.
It’s not perfect, but the personal nature of the events depicted here will hit you hard, and cause at least a few tears to flow down your cheek.
