Mukhsin

The first time we were introduced to Orked in Sepet, she was a spunky 17 year old on the edges of a starcrossed relationship with a Chinese DVD peddler. Then we saw her in Gubra, all grown up and married, but to a person she didn’t love.

In Yasmin Ahmad’s latest film, Mukhsin, we see Orked again, but this time we are brought back to her childhood. In this third movie, we are whisked away from Orked’s problems with her husband, distracted from her fleeting encounter with aforementioned DVD peddler’s brother, and lifted gently away from her timeless love with Jason.

In Mukhsin, we are narrated the story of Orked’s first ever love. Because, as the tagline of the movie goes, everyone has a first love story to tell.

Orked is 10 when she meets Mukhsin, who is 2 years older than her. After trying and failing yet again to fit in with the village girls who spend all their time playing brides and grooms and other saccharide girly games, she goes to the field to watch the boys play ball. ‘Pick Orked to play with us,’ say the boys to newcomer Mukhsin, who is in town only to visit his aunt over the school holidays. ‘She can play like a boy’. Not believing this, Mukhsin throws a ball at Orked in an attempt to suss her out. In true Orked spirit, she flings it back at him defiantly. From that brief interaction, the simplest and most innocent of loves unfolds.

To adults, young children’s puppy loves are always a small and negligible speck in the grand scheme of things, but Mukhsin succeeds in taking this small speck and magnifying it into an all-consuming emotion that spills into infinity. We are drawn into the believability of Orked’s and Mukhsin’s nervousness as they toe the fine line between friendship and love, and their little displays of warmth towards each other remind us that sincerity still exists in this real world of cynicism and ulterior motives. From the screen, these two children reach into our hearts and push us backward into our own experiences of a time when we knew nothing but blissful innocence.

As audience, we can’t help but be moved as we watch their adolescent relationship blossom. It is a bud that blossoms into another bud, never becoming a flower, yet you know that things have changed and will never be the same again.

Besides the main theme of young love, the movie also deals with secondary issues. One of them is the duality of human nature. Mukhsin has an older brother, who in any society would be dubbed the ’sampah masyarakat’ individual who is beyond change and does not deserve help. But we later see that he has deep-rooted issues he doesnt have the capacity to control, and at the very core of his being is simply a childlike yearning to be loved.

We also have Orked’s neighbour, who is a typical gossipy ‘kampung aunty’ who hurls caustic remarks at her neighbours. However, she cuts a sorry figure by the end of the movie, having her own problems to face as well. After witnessing the length of her sad tale, we simply cannot find it in ourselves to go on disliking her. Instead, we symphatize and we finally understand why she is the way she is. In the words of Yasmin Ahmad who wrote and directed this movie : “I don’t want anyone to hate any character in Mukhsin. In the end, even the bad neighbours can be worthy of love. God wants us to forgive.”

On the other hand, her good guys aren’t perfect either. Just as the bad guys have their hidden redeeming qualities, her protagonists have flaws as well; as seen in Orked’s family who rake up debts so big that their furniture is repossessed. Even the kind and jolly Kak Yam, always friendly and comforting, has a tendency of harbouring narrow-minded thoughts.

Mukhsin is also a film about second chances. Subtle events in the movie such as the return of Orked’s cat and the arrival of new furniture at the end underscore the beauty and unexpectedness of God’s grace. Just when we think we should stop hoping, He gives us another shot at making things right.

As always, there are feel-good messages in Mukhsin about racial harmony, this time analogized in the form of melted chocolate and cow’s milk. When asked about her strange method of making ice cream, Kak Yam replies : “I do it like this so that there is the bitter taste of chocolate, then the separate sweet taste of milk, but ultimately also the bittersweet taste of chocolate mixed with milk. That is when ice cream tastes the best.”

The chalk message on the blackboard in little Orked’s room reads, “I prefer playing with boys”. But while her little declaration is seemingly displayed for all to see; she writes it in Chinese, so that all may not understand. The movie, however, is nothing like that. It lays everything out so honestly, that even a deaf person watching it can immediately discern the humanism in each and every scene. While I was watching the movie, I thought it was pretty amazing that Mukhsin won over the judges at the recent Berlin International Film Festival, seeing how the setting of the movie is so quintessentially Malaysian and the subtitles don’t really reflect the dimension of the scenes. But then I realized that the messages in Mukhsin - love, forgiveness, communion, hope and sacrifice - are universal. One doesn’t have to be Malaysian to appreciate the inspiration behind Mukhsin.

If Sepet was onde-onde and Gubra was kuih lapis, then Mukhsin is white rice. Freshly cooked, fluffy, white rice put on a plate and disantap with clean fingers. Yes… that would be Mukhsin.

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okay that’s my poorly-written review. sorry ah very long winded. some other blahblahblah that did not fit in : Sharifah Aryana who plays the young Orked is an excellent child actress that i cannot wait to see more work from. Mohd Syafie carried his role of Mukhsin well enough - his shyness and awkwardness came together nicely to produce a very sincere and real 12 year old. the keroncong music was such a special touch! and i loved the cameo scenes with you-know-who and you-know-who! it was so beautifully dreamlike and surreal … now i want to ride bikes and fly kites in Kuala Selangor paddy fields. sigh!

(note : i wish the pictures were mine but they are not. photos courtesy of Grand Brilliance and Media Prima)

and i oso want to put up this pic of Yasmin Ahmad coz it’s very funny :

Comments March 15th, 2007