An Honest Response to Mustafar A.R

Once in a while a hilarious article masquerading as a serious commentary or criticism towards the Malaysian Film Industry will be written either by an intellectual or pseudo-intellectual or even worse, a pseudo-intellectual wannabe. And yesterday, the much awaited article appeared on the pages of none other than Utusan Malaysia with a much contrived title – FFM26 Semakin Mengarut (FFM26 is getting ridiculous). It was written by one Mustafar A.R.

I will not go through the whole article since we don’t have that much space and I personally think that it is a complete waste of time. But having said that good old Mustafar was questioning why the movie Tanda Putera was not nominated as Best Picture. Dear Mustafar, you don’t need either the jury or the organiser to answer that question for I will answer that for you. Tanda Putera is not an OK film. Neither is it an exceptionally good film. It is a bad really BAD film (please do not ignore the capitals letters in the word bad). It is a really messy film (please refer to my review of the movie http://www.theantdaily.com/Don-t-miss-these/Tanda-Putera-a-messy-epic).

Mustafar was questioning as to why Bunohan won the best picture award at the FFM25. I might not personally agree with some elements of the film but I still believe Bunohan is one of the best Malaysian films ever made. And if Mustafar thinks that Tanda Putera is a much better film than Bunohan then he will need a crash course on filmmaking. I suggest he try any one of the Idiot’s books on filmmaking.

He was saying that the Best Film category is filled with films about crazy people, terrifying ghost, gangsters and violence. Well he is actually describing the winners of the coveted Palm D’or in Cannes. Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction, La Dolce Vita, even the Iranian film Taste of Cherry is about suicide. According to Mustafar’s argument, none of the movies above deserves to win the Palm D’or.

I personally have a problem with the way the film nomination was done, but in my opinion Mustafar’s criticism towards the FFM26 is total rubbish. And I am surprised that it got away through the ‘strict’ editors of Utusan Malaysia. The worst part is that he (Mustafar) never offers any argument as to why he thinks Bunohan didn’t deserve the Best Film award. Rather a childish gesture to me or the phrase ‘constructive criticism’ is not in his dictionary.

The struggling Malaysian Film Industry doesn’t need more baseless commentaries like Mustafar’s in the future. The industry needs more sincere or honest opinion from individuals who sincerely love the industry. Opinions that do not have any hidden agendas or representing certain ‘frustrated quarters’ with even more agendas of their own are seriously not needed.