A review of ‘Tanda Putera’, a film that takes liberties with the truth

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Sep 1, 2013

An elderly Chinese gentleman in the audience walked out halfway. My one regret is that I could not do the same.

Erna Mahyuni, MMO

For Merdeka, I watched Shuhaimi Baba’s docu-drama “Tanda Putera”. Fourteen other people were in the cinema at GSC Paradigm Mall in Petaling Jaya at 11.30am.

I am unsure if any of them enjoyed the film, though an elderly Chinese gentleman in the audience walked out halfway. My one regret is that I could not do the same. The heart of “Tanda Putera” is the friendship of the late Tun Abdul Razak Hussein and Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, played by Rusdi Ramli and Zizan Nin respectively.

Sadly, neither of the actors was up to the mark, but more on that later.

To call this revisionist history would be too kind. “Tanda Putera” is a poorly written, abysmally researched train wreck that makes our local soap operas look like arthouse films.

What amazes me is that it cost RM5 million to make this schlock.

Let me first start with the writing. The dialogue is cringe worthy and I am unsure if it is properly representative of the times. At a critical juncture, an aide described civil unrest as a ‘tension’ situation. Oh my bahasa.

There is no proper use of narrative in the script. Flashbacks are dumped into the film willy-nilly (possibly to keep the audience from sleeping), nonsensical subplots and completely superfluous characters abound with the last half hour dedicated to the deterioration of Razak’s health.

What Shuhaimi attempts to do is paint her impressions of the era and for the first time in film, address Umno’s favourite bogeyman: May 1969.

The problem here is that “Tanda Putera” makes no attempt at nuance. There is no balance; it is a limited and unabashedly prejudiced view of history, painting Malays to be put-upon, virtuous and generous people who have to put up with the ungrateful Chinese so easily swayed by the evil Communists.

To top off a horrid script, we have an ensemble cast with the collective expressiveness of IKEA furniture. Rusdi Ramli’s attempt at ‘method’ acting consists of him speaking in an unconvincing ‘old-time’ accent where he pronounces ‘rahsia’ (secret) as ‘reh-sia’ and having just two expressions. Either he is smiling with teeth or looking constipated. Like Keanu Reeves, for Rusdi there is no in-between.

Zizan Nin as Ismail fares no better. His forced camaraderie with Rusdi comes across as a parody of bromance, with a total absence of chemistry. A third of the film is just long, awkward dialogues where both men conspire to keep their wives (and the whole nation) in the dark about their respective health conditions.

The biggest travesty about Shuhaimi’s script is that it paints two of our greatest statesmen as pompous idiots who do not trust their wives.