Like many Malaysians, I am shocked and I mourn the untimely loss of filmmaker and creative director, Yasmin Ahmad.Simply put, I mindfully ask why we are yet again losing so many great people, so young, so needlessly, so unforeseen—illustrious souls claimed too prematurely by the grim reaper, the proverbial 'thief in the night'.
I have never met Yasmin Ahmad. Yet, I feel a kindred spirit with this fellow Johorean, perhaps the quintessential Malaysian filmmaker within my generation.
Like many wishful and wistful Malaysians nowadays, we all continue to yearn for a lost time and era, where our ethnic diversity was our amalgamated strength and our unique sense of pride.
Yasmin, I believe, is a truer Malaysian than most of us dare to profess. She was more daring than most, to flesh out a more creative version of what it means to be a citizen of this blessed land, which we call Malaysia.
She dared to explore the darker expressions of racial bigotry within our society, which of late has been sundering our communities, in staggered if with unchecked certainty. Interracial relations have always been touchy nearly taboo subjects, which many Malaysians are at pains to sweep under the carpet of self-censored political correctness.
Publicly, we are at pains to project in most instances a tightly controlled sensitivity, and tongue-biting reservedness, which borders on impenetrable aloofness, but loudly declared if perfunctory camaraderie. However, over time, these less than robust facades get sandpapered away to expose the superficiality and the unburnished colder emotions—of barely submerged antagonism and crude stereotypic dehumanising racial slurs.
During political rhetoric and partisan outbursts, the uglier face of racism surfaces, latterly more often than not. Unleashed anger, hurt-pride, mob-instinct, explode more readily with utterances of irrational bigotry—which create vortices of vicious cycles of indignant recriminations, of plangent hurtful sectarian bombast...
Yet, in subtle contradistinction to these stereotypes, in many Petronas-funded commercials, Yasmin was able to inject a heady stream of poignancy and comic relief which showcase our unique connectedness, our inexplicable destiny, rather than spotlight our skin-deep dissimilarities. In other short films, she was able to finesse uncommonly discussed issues, considered by many to be too raw or too crude to be aired—“The Funeral” was one case in point.
Yet she was able to evoke bittersweet emotions which knew no racial or religious bounds, but which continues to showcase our human foibles and our oft-forgotten sensibilities, in a comically tender fashion, which warms the heart.
She married a Chinese (Tan Yew Leong), to wit, as if to announce to the world that she believed her destiny was meant to be—a Malaysian who was bold enough to live and practice without the oppressive constricts of social religious mores, racial taboos or unspoken frowns of politically-incorrect dissuasions...
Better than that she dared project those hypersensitive touchstones which help us all to question our irrational if misguided 'monkeys off our backs' which tether our better gentler spirit to our uglier crasser emotionalism. For many of us, this emotional stunting remains that deeply entrenched molten lava of illogical ethnocentric superciliousness, our ingrained if misguided belief in our own ethnic supremacy. "Aren't all of us racist in our own hearts?"
Yet, many of us are schizophrenic when it comes to being labelled Malaysians. While we may all look quite different, Malays, Chinese, Indians, Dusun-Kadazans, Ibans, etc., we have whenever we are in any international forum or discourse, declared our proud Malaysian origins. We sense ourselves as different, yet similar and unique in an inexplicable way, in spoken Manglish, "-lah"-accentuated speech patterns, so ingrained in our acculturated mindset that only a Malaysian can understand.
Like so well illustrated by another iconic Malaysian artist, Lat, our Malaysianness must stand us apart, if only because only we can fully appreciate the colourful nuances, the comical stereotypes which enhances rather than demeans our differences. Our uncouthness, our jagged crudities, our slapstick teeth-sucking, nose-sniffing mannerisms, our oddly juxtaposed spoken words are but cultural pearls which only our Malaysianness can decipher and find chuckling meaning and furtive humour...
Indeed, while we had been colonized serially for centuries, Malaysia had been blessed by her fecund land: first from our sequential abundance of natural resources—from tin and rubber, then palm oil, then crude oil and latterly expanding into small medium industries, led particularly by our insightful foray into the then explosive electronics industry.
But perhaps most importantly of all, I strongly believe that Malaysia benefited singularly from her peoples: our unique blend of multi-ethnicity, so jingoistically announced to the world as "Malaysia, truly Asia." It was this sensitive portrayal of the eclectic Malaysian and his/her interracial tensions that marked the genius in Yasmin Ahmad.
She had variously been branded an ethnic traitor and frequently labelled as controversial, when all she ever did was to dare to expose the fallacies and the down-to-earth idiocies of racial/religious stereotyping and bigotry.
It appears that the Malay heartland was less impressed with Yasmin's talent and derring-do than other non-Malays, who have always embraced her more readily, sensing her passionate understanding and connectedness. Perhaps not wearing her religion on her sleeves, and having married a non-Malay spouse, might have helped shaped her sense of greater ethnic openness and tolerance.
But there was more than met the creative eye of Yasmin Ahmad. I believe Yasmin was a truer patriot, more in deeds and soul-searching honesty than most. She had that extra touch of creativity and sensitivity which transcended ethnic considerations and concentrated on what truly matters, the human spirit and experience, that singular penetrating understanding of interpersonal relationships, in the unique inescapable setting of multiracial Malaysia... “Sepet” was perhaps Yasmin's best-known work, which won her acclaim and controversial notoriety. A thinly disguised critique of interracial love and emotional relationships heavily tinged with exploits of ethnic bigotry, touched many tender raw spots which were previously considered taboo in Malaysia.
"Sepet" released in 2004, won Malaysian Film Festival Best Film Award (2005), including too several international awards, viz. the Asian Film Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2005, the Grand Prix Award at the 2005 Creteil International Women’s Film Festival.
Since her first movie, “Rabun” in 2003, other films followed: “Sepet” (2004), “Gubra” (2006), “Mukhsin” (2006), “Muallaf” (2008) and Talentime (2009).
Such were her magic touches that almost every film made by Yasmin had won some prize or other in the international film scene, marking her as an extraordinary filmmaker whose eye for social analyses had come of age, in an era where serious quality was often trumped for trendiness and kitsch.
In fact her style and talent so captivated Singapore's Prime Minister, that he'd invited Yasmin Ahmad to direct a film for launch at the Youth Olympics in 2010 in Singapore. Alas, this project is now in limbo...
We'd probably lost forever, the opportunity to see yet another work of a genius, of a truly international class film master...
Sleep well, Yasmin. Your films, your influence, your touch, your Malaysianness will yet outlive your short sojourn on earth. May your unswerving efforts and boldness to deconstruct ethnic taboos, religious boundaries and racial bigotry help realise a better, more united Malaysia.
Rest in Peace.
Al-Fatihah.
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