Tanda Putera falls flat
Shallow research and shoddy attempt by the producers of the movie did not portray true essence of the May 13 incident.
K. Pragalath, FMT
Shuhaimi Baba’s Tanda Putera is a pathetic attempt to create a historical biopic on the life story of our second Prime Minister Tun Razak Hussein and his deputy Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman.
Actor Rusdi Ramli plays the key role as Razak whereas Zizan Nin plays Ismail. The role of Tun Rahah Noah who is Razak’s wife is acted by Faezah Elai. The character of Ismail’s wife, Norashikin Seth was played by Linda Hashim.
Though there is no disclaimer that the movie is a biographical motion picture of the two leaders, one could sense it to be such as there are scenes that show actual newspaper headlines.
Tanda Putera opens with a dramatic scene of an incident where DAP campaign workers kill an Umno campaign helper two weeks prior to the general election then. It further escalates into more clashes in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur after the Alliance party wins the general election with a slim majority.
Surprisingly, even Gerakan party members are featured in a negative role as the DAP members. There is a scene where the Gerakan man says that he would need to seek revenge against the Malays without getting arrested.
The antagonistic nature against the Malays was very evident with cries like “Malays, go back to your villages, Selangor is ours.”
Shuhaimi Baba attempted to debunk foreign reports that claimed on the large number of casualties during the clashes. These reports were based on information revealed by foreign embassies, which were made available to journalists.
In a related scene, the character of Tun Razak says, “the opposition and foreign media are playing up the issue that there are nearly 2000 casualties, but our intelligence puts a smaller number.”
There is also a scene where journalists are cooped up in one place and “forced to use their imagination” to report the riots; and only RTM television channel disseminated official information.
The director of Tanda Putera also tried to negate the notion by Suaram’s Kua Kia Soong who authored the book May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969. Kua had argued that Tunku Abdul Rahman was under house arrest via an internal coup by Tun Razak.
Nevertheless, in the movie Tunku asked Tun Razak to helm the nation following protests pressuring Tunku to step down.
