‘IMAM' - IN A WORLD OF OLD MEN AND THE BEFUDDLED YOUNG GENERATION!

By Mansor bin Puteh

 

 

 

It is easy to watch a film with no reference to the social, cultural, economic as well as political and religious perspective, other than to be taken away by the acting especially and the actors and is lost in the subtleties and shades of what they are saying and mostly, shouting about in the film.

 

And for those who are not very familiar with the local film scene, he won't be able to notice how most of the films produced in the country are all on the younger generation and their antics and fakery about their characters and why they are distracted by certain issues and matters and social activities all of which are first shown in foreign films (read Hollywood!)

 

In the end what we have been seeing from the producers are Fake Hollywood films!

 

And they are liked by those who have never actually been to America to know how the country is like; and those who think that by going to the nearest American fastfood restaurants and watching local films that have traces of Fake Americanism, that they are there, in the country!

 

The film 'Imam' directed by Mior Hashim Manaf is something that is out of the blue.

 

Never have we seen so many 'old characters' in any local film before!

 

In this film, the younger generation do not get the upper hand to exert themselves and their personal concerns; all of this are taken over by the 'old men' that the novelist Abdullah Hussain, a Sasterawan Negara, whose novel with the same title he wrote in the early 1990s wrote just to show how intolerant the 'old fools' are in the plot that he must have copied from the observations he had made then that happened in the country!

 

This film is full of theater and theaterics with a group of 'old men' exerting their only power over the others in the name of religion and by exerting the number of years they had lived and 'amount of salt' they had eaten…as the old Melayu expression goes…

 

Mior Hashim, who is himself has a strong and long background in the theater does not hide his penchant to trust the actors who play the major characters in his film with massive barrage of the dialogue and theaterics!

 

That there are two factions in an isolated in Malaysia that hardly seen that many cars and even motorcycles, with just one masjid, can still be divided along religious lines!

 

But is this film also about 'that small village' only? No! It is also about the whole of the Muslim World itself that has been conveniently reduced to 'that small village' with simpletons that are reduced to the stature of two 'imams' in 'that small village' taking over the attention and daily activities of the entire 'village' that is the 'Muslim World'!

 

So, in order to fully understand and appreciate 'Imam' the film, forget the theaterics and physical antics and crass dialogue…and listen to the whispers one can get in one's heart and try and make sense of the film…to appreciate it more and better…