The Big Durian (2003)

The Big Durian is a Malaysian film in 2003 by Amir Muhammad. It is a film which combines the elements of documentary and a little bit of fiction. Throughout the whole film, there are people from different ethnicity and background were being interviewed regarding the incident in 1987. Some said that this incident was related to the racial issue and political issue in Malaysia.

As this is a documentary film, there are no fictional storyline being told. Instead, people were talking about the incident that happened in Chow Kit back in 1987. It starts from a night, there was a soldier named Adam Jaafar ran amok and started shooting around with an M16 in Chow Kit. This had made the Malaysia citizen to feel panic and spread some rumors about the racial riots. There are people who said that it happens to be related to the incident in 1969 and related to politics. In the end, Adam was captured by surrendering himself after General Ghani had successfully persuaded him.

As what I realized from the interviews, this incident happened because of Malaysia politics and it would be affected by the general election in 1986. Amir Muhammad had made this as a topic to discuss in the film and show us the political ideology of the Malaysian common citizens. As being told by Farish A. Noor, he mentioned that this political system that existed in Malaysia could only disintegrate the Malaysians because it was based on the ethnicity instead of citizenship. In my perspective, we can clearly see this from the political parties that exist in Malaysia. For instance, we have United Malays National Organization (UMNO) which only consists of Malays, Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) that only consists of Chinese, where as Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) which only consists of Indians in Malaysia. This had made the Malaysian to fight over human and financial resources with other different ethnic group. This had eventually lead to racism and violence. For example, we can see this racism issue that planted inside the mind of the Malaysian from the interview of the woman in a CD store. She had mentioned how she thought about her friends from other races and how her father thought. It showed how the politics in Malaysian had made Malaysia's citizens to have a racism point of view towards the society. Besides, there are some who said that the political parties in Malaysian often creates trouble in the society that involves violence, deception and racism to make the citizen keep silence. They seem to forget that the citizens are the one who voted for their power.

The “voice” of the digital filmmakers after the millennium seems to be more concerned more about the incidents that happened around them. Just like The Big Durian (2003), they will bring out some political or sociological issue that needs audiences to think about. They might use the film as a platform to educate the people more than just entertain them. We can see a lot of ideology behind the film or even the plot of the film that is worth to be discussed.

In conclusion, Amir Muhammad’s documentary The Big Durian (2003) had shown the political ideology given by the multiracial citizen of Malaysia regarding the soldier who ran amok in 1987. There are some who said that it is affected by the politics in Malaysia which had led to some racism riot issue. This issue often brought up by the millennial filmmakers with the intention to educate the audience.