Puteri Gunung Ledang

i was disappointed. i very much wanted to like this film as i'd like to hope high for Malaysian films. first the good - m nasir was very good. he met my expectation and handled a tedious script to his very best. sofia jane was excellent. if the stories that jaquelina instructed the removal of lots of jane's scenes are true (to take out screen "competition"... jaquelina co-produced this with her husband) then it is regrettable. it's just a rumor, but one does wonder why an excellent performer and performance ended up so maligned. moving on, the production values are all excellent. great set, nice cinematography, nice costumes... editing style was fine, though the decision to drag it out to 145 minutes was certainly ill-chosen.

now the bad. tiara jaquelina was really not fit to play this role. she is so limited, so one-dimensional and so wooden. she doesn't exude the grace nor the natural beauty demanded of the role, nor does she poses a voice (a bit croaky, isn't it?) to perform lengthy verses of spoken word poetry kinda dialogue and voice over. inevitable that she was the lead actress but deeply, deeply flawed decision for the film.

poor characterisation. didn't feel for them all. m nasir tries and succeeds somewhat to elicit a response from me but the rest of the leading cast are all cardboards. i'll blame the scriptwriter for this. just too much screen time for everyone but the film doesn't work hard enough to develop character, narrative and a love for the world. it's so easy already because everything's in place: great set, great story, great characters. in the end it just became a bad tiara star vehicle.

that's why i'm so disappointed.

Puteri Gunung Ledang the most highly anticipated movie of the year has finally decided to make its appearance. The film managed to fulfill the audience's expectation on it. Credits have to be given to all the crew of the film who I can see had been working very hard to ensure the movie's success. The setting, the cinematography, the colours, the background music complementing each other and thus deliver this movie to a class of its own.

Thumbs up to M.Nasir as the Lord Admiral Hang Tuah. He has given a different interpretation to the elusive Hang Tuah. His facial expression very much reflected the turmoil of emotions between his "cinta agung" and his loyalty to his Sultan.

Tiara as the beautiful princess of Mount Ledang has done her best to envelope herself into the character and she has done it well. The unspoken bond between the princess and Hang Tuah was clearly prevailed by her eyes, smile and gesture as they were united by the waterfall.

Overall, it is a good film and thumbs up to the script writer for the very poetic dialogue especially the dialogue between Hang Tuah and the princess when they expressed their undying love for each other. It is a sad love story and I couldn't help myself shedding a tear or two for the two lovers who had to endure so much for the sake of their "cinta agung"

Kudos to the whole production of Puteri Gunung Ledang!

For the first time in my life, I really have to admit that Puteri Gunung Ledang is so far the first Malaysian movie that contains all the right ingredients for a good and watchable movie. Truthfully, I have never liked any Malaysian-made movies before PGL, thinking that either the filmmakers here never actually bother for quality for the sake of money or perhaps, obviously, that they don't know the proper principles of film-making after all. When I decided to watch PGL a few weeks ago, I kept asking myself if this money was worth the ticket price. Fortunately, it was. Thanks to Teong Hin Saw's brilliant direction, PGL gives a refreshingly new perspective to the casual viewers and also fans of World History.

Basically, it is a love story between Hang Tuah, the legendary Malay Warrior of Malacca and the Javanese princess Gusti Putri (the title character) whose relationship arouses the tensions between two worlds: the Sultanate of Malacca and the Majapahit Empire. The plot may be a bit straightforward but its production values makes a major leap over the previous Malaysian outings; you can safely assume that PGL is definitely a work of a pro. Great cinematography (forget about the Cameron Highlands issue), exhilarating camera moves and editing, decent fighting sequences and quality SFX prove it all. Casting, on the other side, is a mixed bag: some perform extremely well, expressing their powerful gestures convincingly while the rest are surprisingly wooden, leaving lots of rooms for improvement.

It's true that PGL is not without flaws: the most obvious is the pacing of the entire movie and as a result, it is not a well balanced movie. The lack of any action sequence in the middle act makes the movie seem a bit draggy, filled with long (twisted for some viewers) conversations, tight focus upon the two lovers and other unnecessary slow-moving sequences. Unlike any international epic movies you have seen, PGL is rated 'G', suitable for the whole family, which basically means that it contains no forms of profanity or suggestive elements that may otherwise prove sensitive to some viewers. This only cheapens the maturity of this movie: for me, the whole movie, despite excellent production values, feels mild and unsatisfying as if I ate a half-baked cake.

PGL could have been a great contender in any film festival if a) it were a bit more sensual (ala Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), b) more violent (ala Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy), c) more thought-provoking and visually more disturbing (ala Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind). Despite these inevitable drawbacks, the Malaysian film industry seems to be taking the right path and this is just the beginning. For now, PGL feels like a good movie. Not phenomenal, though.

Sure, the plot was a bit dragging, lame at times, illogical at others, but still, you must give credit for such a beautiful Malaysian movie. The cinematography (spelling?!) was fabulous, perhaps even up to Hollywood standards if i might say so myself.

so what if tiara's not really Javanese? nama pun acting. she played the role quite well, i can't really think of any other Malay actress who could pull it off better. The cast was quite nicely selected too, and aside for the Sabri Yunus jokes (which were one too many) while they were going up Gunung Ledang, the movie was really one of a kind.

Although they didn't win best movie for the FFM that year, I dare say they deserve credit for creating something as beautiful as that, definitely worth the millions spent.

I'd say the movie was a great achievement for the Malaysian movie industry, really, it'd be worth it just to watch it for the beautiful shots.

This handsomely mounted period epic set during the 16th century Malaccan empire is Malaysia's most expensive film at US$5M. The princess of Majapahit, Retno Dumillah, exiles herself to the Malaccan peak of Mount Ophir to entreat the company of her lover, the Malaccan warrior Hang Tuah. This is in open defiance of her brother, Gusti Adipati, the ruler of Majapahit, who had intended to marry her to a prince of the rival Demak empire. Adipati then decides to forge an alliance with the Malaccan sultanate instead by offering his sister as bride to the reigning Sultan, Mahmud. Hang Tuah's allegiance to duty is legendary. He slew his best friend, Hang Jebat, many years prior on the Sultan Mansor's orders. However, the Sultan Mahmud, a preening and decadent ruler, is a pale shadow of the glorious lineage of Malaccan royalty. Should Hang Tuah banish forever his love in favor of a vainglorious tyrant?

Production values are excellent in general. Picture overall has a glossy, polished sheen. Some inexperience in photography is evident – an intruding palm frond at the edges of the frame, actors half cut off at the sides, shot suddenly partially blocked by the back of an actor in front of the camera (!). The period milieu and mise-en-scene are gorgeous, the palace rituals and traditional malay / javanese speech appear authentic. Nice background research there. The music is excellent with a nice mix of western strings and Malay traditional instruments like the sruling during the love scenes and rebana in the palace scenes.

The acting is uniformly above par across the board, especially M. Nasir as the legendary warrior, Hang Tuah. Malaysian actors are some of the finest in this region and Nasir carries a screen presence that conveys the nobility of this most famous of perwira melayu. It is also nice to see Rahim Razali, a household screen personality, in an amiable performance as the Tok Bendahara. Tiara Jacquelina as the titular princess is adequately winsome. The script, however, does not allow her to show why she was such a sought after woman. Sofia Jane appears more assured as the Sultan's wife. Adlin Ramlee's alternately cocky, languid and foppish portrayal of Sultan Mahmud takes some getting used to, but in retrospect, it seems about right. Both the princess and the sultan get a chance to shine with a neat verbal confrontation near the end. The standout is Christine Hakim who, quite frankly, is a class act. Alex Komang is a washout in a poorly written role as the Majapahit prince, consisting exclusively of sneers and scowls.

The story overall could do with a lot more dramatic urgency. Many sequences look thrown in to appease the multiplex crowd, inserted without attention to the overall arc of the story. An earlier sequence of Hang Tuah taking on a posse of 'lanun darat' is very well done. However, there is a gratuitous action sequence which comes in so far off leftfield, involving some silly 70s- style kungfu fighting, that threatens to derail the entire film. This is the sort of action sequence where a fighter slashes his dagger in the air and ten fireballs erupt around him from the ground. Although this was meant as a 'battle of the mind', the overall effect is laughably cheesy. Worse, the whole sequence is arbitrarily inserted at a most inappropriate part of the narrative – there is no buildup and aftermath. Likewise, CGI superimposition of the 'seven requests of the princess', floating across the screen like a ticker tape, is ungainly.

Elsewhere, instead of character driven scenes, we get actors who pose and pose while mouthing purple prose. Many issues are unfocused as a result. Why and how did Hang Tuah and Dumillah fall in love? There are nice scenes of the couple riding horseback, doing an intricate courtship dance, at a lake. They look pretty, like postcards of two people in love, but the scenes lack actual resonance. At one point, Hang Tuah shows the princess his big Keris; she stares in awe at it. Unfortunately, no character driven dialog. The crucial scene where Hang Tuah meets his beloved atop Mount Ophir starts off nicely: like a breathless teenager hopelessly late for a date, he blurts: 'Dah tunggu lama ke?' ('Been waiting long?'). However, this is proceeded by endless swooping, panning and swirling of the camera around the actors including editing that I believe violate the 180 degree rule. All that 'technique' is frankly distracting. What's wrong with action-reaction, medium two shots and close-ups anyway? There are more than several shots where the emphasis was more on a sunset or a waterfall than the characters themselves. Anyway, the lovers go at it with dialog cribbed from a Harlequin romance.

Whither the inner conflict of the noble warrior between love and duty? We do get a solitary soliloquy of sorts: Hang Tuah talking to his reflection in a puddle of water like a refugee from an Ingmar Bergman film, and that's it. Why the great animosity between Hang Tuah and the Java prince? The film offers absolutely no exposition there.

Being a prestige film, direction is serious and high minded. However, this is largely betrayed by a dearth of psychological depth and dramatic weight. A certain lack of joie-de-vivre permeates the film, making one wish that the late great P. Ramlee could lend his charismatic presence to the whole proceedings.

The film ends poetically with Hang Tuah rushing up Mount Ophir in a sequence of solemn and hushed silence, in a moment of cathartic realization and sadness. The broad strokes for a grand tragedy are all there, but the interlocking narrative is unfocused. It's like hearing bits and pieces of a symphony from a distance. It's a shame: the money saved from that silly bit of aerial kungfu fighting could have gone towards additional scenes between the two main characters – the final sequence could have had much more impact.