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Muti-racial Malaysian film: Talentime (2009)



Talentime is a Malaysian film produced in 2009 It is a drama film directed by Yasmin Ahmad about love and despair. In this film, we can see that there were two sides of the story. One is about the love of Melur and Mahesh, while another one is about the love of Hafiz and his mother. Both stories had shown a downfall that the main characters faced and how they go through their struggles.

There is a talentime competition organised by Cikgu Adibah in a school for the students to participate. The students who were interested went through the audition and some of them were elected, including Melur and Hafiz. Since Melur was elected, Mahesh, an Indian boy was in charge for fetching her the rehearsal. In the beginning, Melur was mad with Mahesh as she thought that Mahesh ignore her on purpose because of his uncle’s death. After that, she realized that Mahesh is actually  having a hearing impair. Then, both of them slowly fell in love with each other even though that Mahesh’s mother against it. On the other side of the story, it is about Hafiz, a talented singer and also students from the school. His story is about the love of him with his mother. Even though his mother passed away, he still stands strong and do his best for his competition as how he promised his mother. 

Talentime (2009) is really a meaningful film directed by Yasmin. According to Yasmin (2007), she said that the idea behind the film is that all of us will have to go through many pains and downfalls if we want to succeed. I totally agree with what she said here because I know that it’s not easy to be successful. Besides, I also like how Yasmin create this character, Hafiz. I think that this character is really a good example for the audience because of his rationality and good emotional control. I am inspired by his attitude of not giving up and stay strong to participate in the competition even though his mother passed away on the same day. 

Talking about Malaysian film, I think the best thing to define its identity is the multi-racial elements that can be found in the film. Indeed, we can actually find a lot of multi-racial elements in this film by Yasmin Ahmad. First of all, Yasmin had created characters with various races. We can see that the students from the film are consists of Malay, Indian and also Chinese. For example, Melur is a Malay, Mahesh is an Indian, and Kahoe is a Chinese. It is really important to include characters from different races in a Malaysian film because we all know that Malaysia is a multi-racial country. 

Furthermore, Yasmin had also shown the multi-racial elements in terms of religion. She had given this message through her film, which Malay is a race and Muslim is a religion. We can see this when Datin Kalsom visited Melur’s family and went for a vacation with them, she questioned why is Mei Ling, who seems to be a non-Islam Chinese work in Melur’s house. The answer given by Melu’s mother is quite surprising because she said that Mei Ling is a Chinese but her religion is actually Islam. I think that this is a really good message given by Yasmin because we often have the stereotype of assuming that Muslims are Malays. 

Last but not least, Yasmin Ahmad had also included the multi-racial element in term of language in her film. This is quite a common element to be found in most of the Malaysian films including “Talentime”. There are several languages being spoken with in this film, such as English, Malay, Tamil and also Mandarin. For instance, the conversation between Hafiz and his mother is in Malay, Kahoe and a Chinese junior is in Mandarin, Mahesh’s uncle and mother is in Tamil and most of the conversations are in English. 

In conclusion, there are multi-racial elements to be found in Yasmin Ahmad’s “Talentime”, in terms of character settings, religions and also language. This element is really important to any Malaysian film because it reflects the diversity of Malaysia’s population.

References
Ahmad, Y. (2007). "Talentime". The search for a hero continues. Retrieved from http://yasminthestoryteller.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html. 

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