mentega terbang
a review, or maybe thoughts on a movie
yesterday i watched the most controversial film ever made, yet. or so it seems, from the general public reaction. initially, i did not want to know what the fuss is about. for the sake of remaining *inscrutable* and *mysterious* i have stopped commenting on hot button topics like these but for some reason, a comment made by someone i know itched and urged me to watch it anyways.
the premise is quite straightforward: aisyah is a 16 year old middle class malay girl, who studied the theology of other religion, particularly the conception of afterlives in each religion in a project that she & her mother started, “one verse a day”. in the opening scene, there is a quran on the nightstand while aishah, lounging on her bed were reading the bible in deep concentration. subsequently, you can see aishah and her parents talking about the merits of christianity & judaism on the kitchen table.
re: the controversy then came in a few scenes, as far as i could recall.
aishah asking to taste pork bun that her classmate suresh bought for himself
her father saying that it was okay if she does not believe in islam and that he is okay with whatever religion that she chooses to believe in
aishah confiding in her christian neighbour that even if she wants to, she cannot leave the religion that she was born in
aishah petting a dog????
to me, the film is first and foremost an exploration of aishah’s pending grief on the loss of her mother and the big, unknowable vastness of death. it is all there is. if you strip the theological discussion you could see that aishah is a child who is not yet ready to let go of her mother. one can clearly feel her optimism when she dismissed suresh’s sympathy and her eagerness in the new treatment that was recommended by the oncologist for her mother. in fact, the “discussion” on religion is only heavy if you have no prior understanding of other religions. if you have not yet felt how big, how confusing grief can be i don’t think you would appreciate this movie for what it was.
i have nothing to say about the choices of religions that she studied except for that there is only a surface-level discussion of it. the reaction to this film whether it is from its political perspective (which i will not talk about but i have noticed how much the ultra-conservatives eat up the movie as a way to get back at the current “liberal” government) or the cultural perspective of it, i guess. the reaction sometimes is more interesting than the film itself. so many people are irrationally angry at this film and it begs the question, why? why are you so angry? why do you feel so threatened? why do you find it so dangerous that a child would be curious with the religion, this system of life that she was born into? is being a muslim, to be in this religion, islam, not a conscious choice that you have to make over and over and over again?
but most of all i am confounded by the intervention of the state in pulling this film from a streaming platform. to have the state further intervene in such matters only shows how infantilised we have become as believers. i watched this film along with friends and the conversations that follows are very interesting. one of my friends are currently in hungary and we had a discussion about the movie and it felt strangely cathartic for us. we both contend that we have not study enough of our religion that in her case, it became something of an embarassment especially since she has become the first muslim friend of so many christians there (hungary is also a notoriously far-right country, in case you didn’t know. orban is the european trump, in a way) and she is, unwilling or not becomes the living ambassador of our religion among her group of friends. what does it say about us, the ambassadors of our religions with our other countrymen? how do we look like to them? the questions that aishah posed should only make us want to further deepen our understanding of the religion so that one day, if our child are curious as aishah (and how wonderful will that be!) we can guide them with the same kindness, compassion and temerity that her parents showed in the film. there are some viewers who commented that the reaction would be very different if the religion is switched. and that is true. there is no compulsion in believing unless of course, you are muslim. and then that becomes apostasy. the current cultural and political climate have become so hostile for the people who does not conform in any way, shape or form. next, the malay crowd are so succinctly portrayed by the patrician next door, uncle kassim. when he told aishah that other non-muslims (christians, in particular) have a sly, hidden agenda to impose on us muslims makes me laugh because that is literally what everyone i have known thought (for context, i am a recipient of every affirmative action the government has provided for malays so i grew up and still are surrounded in an all-malay environment. a nice little bubble, a terrarium of malayness), a person that i know sincerely, truly believed that christian pastors took aborted fetuses to be mixed in holy water. please do not ask me how. if anything, uncle kassim is a true representative, a furtive mirror of the community that i grew up in. i wonder if the people who berated this movie excessively realizes how ridiculous their believe is about other people when it was represented in uncle kassim? probably not. i don’t think many of them truly watched the film. also, what tickles me is how big of a hypocrite some people can be. this is not an ad hominem attack but how come the father that was tattoed is deemed as immoral when i have personally seen so many new converts can freely posts their photos in the holiest of places, tattoo and all and people can embrace them with open arms. why is the father’s case different? is it because he is a malay man with tattoos? will god not redeem him too if he repents sincerely? the ideation and intertwining of the concept of malayness rooted in islam sometimes can and will be the root of contention of some people and i genuinely detest it. how easy it is to polemicise and politicise an individual’s bodies and spaces because they do not conform to the narrow, frankly claustrophobic idea of what constitutes a malay muslim.
and in a way, isn’t aishah doing the very first thing that Allah commanded our prophet Muhammad to do, iqra’? didn’t Allah also said that He created us in so many shapes and forms so we can learn from each other?