Wednesday

Kaki Bakar & Jogho-U-Wei Bin Haji Saari


Synopsis:

Kaki Bakar @ The Arsonist
According to Filem Malaysia the story goes like this Kaki Bakar involves the struggles of an undocumented immigrant family and a boy's coming-of-age. The son Kesuma must forge his own identity against the intimidating presence of his father Kakang, a man proud of his Javanese heritage and well aware of the social inequalities that allow his exploitation. Kakang counteracts by torching the property of those who slight him, leaving Kesuma simultaneously proud, fearful and ashamed. A clash of wills is all but inevitable. The film climaxes in a poignant conflagration, literal and metaphorical.

Jogho
According to Filem Malaysia the story goes like this Mamat is a native of Kelantan, Malaysia, but he had left Malaysia many years earlier to join his brother Lazim in South Thailand in order to continue making his living as a trainer of fighting bulls (a Jogho). The practice had been outlawed in Malaysia but continued in Thailand. Mamat lives with his wife and three daughters, three divorcees and one who has not yet married, but he has sent his only son to boarding school in Kelantan. Mamat and Lazim are the leaders in a small village that depends mostly on the money won from gambling in bullfights for its sustenance. The story begins when Lazim is killed by Isa at the bullfighting arena. By tradition, this leaves Mamat and the young men the responsibility of taking revenge and thus preserving the honor of the village. Mamat visits Kelantan and arranges for his friend Jaafar to find and kill the perpetrators. Returning home, Mamat is gored by his new bull and is bedridden for several days. At the same time Lazim's two sons and a friend have gone into the town and managed to kill Isa's son Hamdan and his assistant Dollah Munduk. After the killing, the young men hide and Mamat is arrested by the Thai police, leaving the women alone to manage not only the village affairs but also to care for the bull. From the jail, Mamat pleads with his wife to pay the bail so that he will be able to fight the new bull. He is at last freed on the morning of the bullfight. At the bullfighting arena, Isa comes to avenge the death of his son. Isa shoots Mamat but miraculously misses his first shot and the second shot only manages to wound Mamat in the shoulder. Mamat wrestles the gun from Isa and knocks him to the ground. Now Mamat has the chance to kill Isa and avenge the death of Lazim, but Mamat refuses as he has become tired of Malays killing Malays. He lowers the pistol. But Lazim's son Sani grabs the gun and shoots Isa instead. The police come and Mamat surrenders himself to them, taking the responsibility for the murder. Although Mamat is taken away by the Thai police, the cycle of violence within the Malay community continues.

Review:

Both movies have won the best films in their respective year. Kaki Bakar has won international award in foreign language category.
In these two films directed by the famous U-Wei bin Haji Saari, we can clearly see the authorship techniques embedded in them. Authorship approaches means the styles that an author used to write his film or text. There are seven ways one can identify authorship, they are: Origins, Personality, Sociology of Production, Signature, Reading Strategy, Site of Discourses and Technique of the Self. They must be traceable across few films from the same author.

U-Wei uses his signature where he repeated his production traits and styles across these two award winning films. The tracking shots that U-Wei uses in Kaki Bakar when the camera tracks the father and son walking towards Mr Kassim’s house. Whereas in Jogho, the shots became slightly sophisticated where a added a touch of creativity in the shots. Instead of a traditional tracking shots, where two characters were walking, he then add a pan to the right and crane shots towards a kampong house.

The scene that I like in Kaki Bakar is where Kakang was in distress and he seeks for comfort from God. This shows that no matter how depress or how down his feelings is, he still turns to God and seeks reassurance. He is strong in his religion and beliefs. His family also reads the Quran everyday and prays together as a family. In Jogho, I like the part where the female have courage to voice out eventhough in the end they still follow whatever the male said, for example between Mamat and Minah. Compared to Kaki Bakar, the female’s role was always to follow whatever the man said. Kakang was portraying his hypermasculinity throughout the whole film and his wife and daughters listen to him without objecting. At the end, his wife finally objects his idea of holding Kasuma down and she frees him to save Kakang.

In the two films, the part that I dislike was the non-diegetic sound. It was very disturbing to me. The sounds give me a creepy feeling and make my goose bumps rises. It is very obvious in both films that they have non-diegetic sounds. Maybe this is the author’s signature which I did not like it.

The way that these two stories been told is very different. Kaki Bakar starts off with a linear sequence where there is a beginning then the middle and follows with an ending. Where else, in Jogho, it begins with the middle, then the beginning and ends with the ending. The number of characters also increases in Jogho so there is more point of views being shown.

Both stories share the same theme.
 -Fight for one's right even if it was perversed or tainted.
-Fight for one's justice.
-Fight for one's freedom.
-Fight for one's honour.

The social inequalities were very obvious. In Jogho, the locals look down on the Patani. For example, when the police came over to Mamat’s house, he said : I don’t want to hear any more trouble from your people. In Kaki Bakar, the local Malay looks down on Kakang and his family because they are Javanese. Both Kakang’s family and Mamat’s family struggle to live in an alien place. They are trying their best to survive but they are being alienated by the locals. It is not fair for them as they are human beings too and they have emotions.

Mise-en-scene of the two movies was appropriate. The only disappointing thing is that the night scene which is too dark. Nothing can be seen. It was just solely black screen. Luckily there was subtitles gor me to read if not I would not know what happened.

Kusuma at the end, betrayed his dad by reporting the incident indirectly to Kassim. I admire his courage and I felt his heart ache. It was a tough decision to make as they lost their sole breadwinner. Overall, I am not in favor for two films by U-Wei. They have good storylines with valuable themes but I still do not like the movie. 

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