‘LUAR BIASA’ (SPECIAL): THERE ARE SOME THINGS WHICH ARE EXTRAORDINARY AND ‘SPECIAL’ IN THIS TELEVISION DRAMAS

AND NOT PECULIAR IN MOST LOCAL DRAMA PRODUCTIONS…ON AUTISM, CHILDREN GROWING UP AND VILLAGES BECOMING EXTINCT AND VALUES FADING AWAY…

I have not watched a local telemovie in a long, long time, much less wanted to spend time writing about it.

But last night (25 November, 2017) for two hours I lay on the bed with my head propped up by thick pillows to watch this telemovie called ‘Luar Biasa’, on Astro 134. I would translate the title as ‘Special’ as none was offered by its producers.

As in most cases even watching History, Discovery, NatGeo or any other local television drama programs would send me off to slumber land only to wake up after they have ended.

There are a few things I can talk about concerning ‘Luar Biasa’. It is on two boys from a village, Saiful and Redzuan, one of whom suffers from autism, not a kind of story that one wants to use as a theme for a feature film in Malaysia. It had not been done before.

In the past cancers had been used over and over again, until it became too sickening for the viewers.  

It is not easy to produce a television drama on such a topic and on such boys without the director taking it to different areas to draw sympathy, and ending with the viewers feeling less sympathetic to them than they were earlier.

It is also about children growing up in a village which may face extinction as the years go on, if you are drawn to such issues to want to look at the drama in this way.

I choose to look at it from the autism, children growing up and villages becoming extinct and values fading away…as there are more to see and appreciate and wonder, a theme that has not been used in many Malaysian telemovies before.

The acting by the autistic boy looks passable; at least we can feel that he is not trying to mimic such a boy, but by pretending to be one which is not an easy effort to sustain and convince the viewers, without feeling sorry for himself to elicit sympathy from anyone. 

The first is how its director Tunku Mona has successfully recreated by design or otherwise; consciously or not, a rural setting in all its simplicity and innocence and captured what many local cineaste and television drama producers have all miserably failed to show in their blind pursuit to copy what they perceive as virtues of modernism and social and economic advancement.

It is a telemovie which follows in the wake of her earlier success with a film debut called ‘Redha’ (Beautiful Pain) which is on autism, a film I have yet to see because it is not yet available on DVD that I could purchase anywhere to preview.

This film seems to have been shown in many international film festivals which also resulted in her winning ‘Best New Director’ in the last Malaysian Film Festival held at the Dewan Merdeka, PWTC which I attended.

All the local television stations, including those in the Astro group of companies seem to enjoy showing in their dramas of make-believe ideals and illusions and personal angst and exasperations and delusions all deluded from their easy copying from productions from America, South Korea and even the Philippines where the dramas mostly portray the middle class in all its fakery.

And they are mostly shot in the wide angle with everyone in it, without much intercutting or using the reverse shots. So no wonder they could finish production in a matter of days.

Worse, these dramas mostly center on the fabulously wealthy but whose sense of judgment is suspect in the haste that their producers want to show drama in such high flown intensity with the titles having words such as ‘Cinta’, ‘Kasih’ and ‘Sayang’ (Love, Honey and Babe) and such catchy words that thought could attract the attention of the viewers. 

But alas what they all had managed to achieve to do which is to highlight the simplest of mood, feelings and gestures - and pressing issues - as in this case, cerebral palsy...an issue that had never been discussed in a local television drama before.

The fact that the story is based on a true story specifically on a Malaysian medalist in the Paralympics seem to have escaped the attention of many.

It could be a feature film in its own right. And the producer could have got support from the athlete himself and also the Malaysian Paralympics Association, if there is such a thing. But will the general viewers like to see this sort of film?

Tunku Mona had made her debut feature film called ‘Redha’ (Beautiful Pain) on a boy who suffers from autism but it did not manage to get wide support from the viewers when it was shown in the cinemas. But it went on to be shown in many international film festivals and won some recognition from unlikely people.

Films that carry strong social themes are still being frowned upon by the viewers in Malaysia, unlike in Hollywood, one can still expect their films that carry such themes to get support.

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In some ways, this telemovie, reminds me of the one I had made in the early 1990s called, ‘Anak Ketujuh’ (The Seventh Child) that was shown on a private television station that later became known as Channel 9 after its ownership changed hands, and also SCTV of Indonesia and also by a private television station in the Netherlands, I was told.

It is about a Melayu woman who is pregnant for the seventh time, but her husband, a fisherman is aloof to the fact and does not help her to tend the paddy-fields as it is not his concern. He in the end spends time after fishing to be with his friends and gambling away.

But they actually have four children, two had died in miscarriages.