Film Studies II - Bunohan

Bunohan is a Malaysian drama thriller film, written and directed by Dain Iskandar Said and released on 8 March 2012. Bunohan were praised for its solid, visceral storytelling and arresting photography. The film take place in the rural town of Bunohan, which located close to the Thai border.

Bunohan is a story about three brothers, from the eldest to the youngest, Ilham, Bakar and Adil aka Bunga Lalang. The film starts with Adil as a Tomoi kick boxer who agree to fight till the death in a club at Thailand, he was later rescued by his friends as he was going to lose the fight. Adil flee with his friends to Adil's hometown, Bunohan, "Murder" in English. Adil is chase after by Ilham which send by the kickboxing club owner to assassinate him, but later both of them discovered they are stepbrother, and Bakar, the greedy businessman has return home. Bakar as a two-faced character, acting he is care about his old man, Pok Eng. but in reality he just wanted to get the old man's land for redevelopment. Not only that, he also take advantage on the needy local. Adil were still desperately searching the truth of his family heritage, and step back into the kickboxing ring again. Ilham still continue his bloody work as killing people as requested. At the end, Bakar successfully take over his father property and build a resort.

Bunohan is filled with artistic element. Its camera technique, language, unique culture were totally different from other Malaysia film. The director Dain used frame within frame technique to draw audience's attention and focus to a certain object and angle, this technique is also similar to a Hong Kong director, Wong Kar-Wai film technique in his film, In the mood for love.

Frame within frame scene in Bunohan

Dain has shown the beauty of the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, even the region is prone to floods and expected monsoon seasons, Dain and his team overcome the challenges and produce beautiful cinematography as an outcome. The director also concern the local unique culture in the film, which well known by local are Wayang Kulit, kickboxing, uses medicinal herbs as traditional medicine in their daily life.

Dain shows landscape of the local place

kickboxing is favorite by the locals

Pok Eng with his Wayang Kulit puppet

Adil applying traditional medicine prepared by Pok Wah

The language used in the film are mostly Kelantan language, also known as Bahasa Kelate in Malay language, this language has its own dialect and accent which make it easily distinguish itself and unique from other Malay language. It is hard for non Kelantanese to understand the language as some of their vocabulary were totally different meaning with the usual Malay we learn in school. In the film, Jolok the businessman mention about the slang and dialect might be different, but the message are still the same. As example, Malay vocab end's with 'am','an', and 'ang' are replace with 'e', such as jange (jangan), aye (ayam), pise (pisang) and male (malam).

Wayang Kulit is well known traditional performing arts in Kelantan, it offers a unique combination of ritual, lesson and entertainment to its audience. In the film, the three brothers father, Pok Eng was a perfomer of Wayang Kulit. Dain uses Wayang Kulit as a metaphor of the spiritual world of Pok Eng, as Pok Eng managing his puppets, a kid appears and ask him why he didn't finish one of the old puppet that he own, he told the kid he couldn't finish it and the kid disappear after the words as the metaphor of his commiserate memories in the past.

Other than that, the locals in Kelantan did belief the presence of spirits, as an example, nearly in the end of the film, Pok Eng passed away wife, Mek Yah show up and asked him to join her to continue their relationship which Pok Eng feel regret about it before.

Bunohan focus more into the masculinity of the 3 brothers, which is a very popular element in a Malay film, and if you have watch the film, you will notice that female character only appear few times in the film. It also give message on character appearance does not always suit like their personality. The film has greatly convey this message by showing Adil with a gangster face but a soften heart, Bakar looks harmless and innocent was a villain in the film as he has wild ambition to take over his father property and turn into a resort in the end.

The eldest brother, Ilham, the assassin

Bakar, the greedy buinessman

The youngest brother, Adil, the Tomoi kickboxer

In conclusion, Bunohan is a film based on the true incident happened at Kampong Bunohan, it also shown the unique culture such as Wayang Kulit and kickboxing and the language of Kelantan, Bahasa Kelate.