Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa

Finally, the long awaited Malaysian movie of the year was released a few days ago. For those who haven’t heard of this movie, check out the trailer below. Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa is based loosely on the actual Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa that written in the 16th Century (historians are still unsure exactly when it was written).

I went to see it with my family a few days ago and this is by far the best action-epic movie that a Malaysian producer has ever made. It was amazing. The cast, the fighting scenes and the special effects.

Anyway, here are my reviews [SPOILER ALERT]:

• Very good action scene. Fast paced, realistic fighting choreography and impressive show of epic battles
• Interesting plot with sub-stories, although they could improve by providing more depth on other characters
• Excellent casting. They got the perfect hero, and the heroin
• Brilliant display of culture and dressing of the time (~2nd Century CE)
• Beautifully written classic Malay language, especially the poems, absolute classic
• Not so brilliant choice of music, they should have created a proper theme song
• The ending was a bit rush, you would agree if you had watched it. They could use a few more scenes to show what happened after the battle. For example, they could use a scene to show Merong’s body brought back to his village and Embok crying over his body, while putting her hand on her tummy (she was pregnant), saying “zuriat-zuriat mu akan berlansung dari kandunganku and jadilah mereka raja-raja yang teragung di tanah ini” (English: your descendants would live on from my womb and they would be great kings of this land). Yes, that was my modest attempt at classic Malay.

All in all, it was a great effort by KRU Studios. I felt really proud watching it. Malaysian production has come a long way, and this movie is definitely gonna make it internationally. They have room for improvement, and I hope from here onwards we’ll be creating even bigger and better epic movies!

http://www.mataharibooks.com/sejarahmelayu/

They call this project Sejarah Melayu Reloaded. After reading a few chapters on their website, I started promoting it to my family and friends. I insist that they must read it.

Sejarah Melayu

I totally understand the difficulties in reading old text. I have my own hardcopy of Sejarah Melayu at home. You have to be a die-hard history fan to want to read the original copy. Just like Shakespearean English, the original Sejarah Melayu has an elaborate (not to mention archaic) language structure that the average person would have difficulty understanding. The Reloaded version is funny enough that it builds up interest for the average reader. What better way to make the younger generation understand history better!

Kudos to the guys at Matahari Books! If you guys ever produce a printed version (perhaps with some pictures in it), that’ll be awesome!

http://umno-kgserdang.blogspot.com/2010/05/sultan-payung-negeri.html

The article was well written and it is a timely reminder to all of us. One of the interesting bits is that my ancestor was mentioned in the article:

Masih segar juga dalam sejarah, apabila al-Marhum Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin yang memerintah bersama regu ulamanya Sayyid Hussain al-Faradz mengisytiharkan Undang-Undang 99 sebagai undang-undang keadilan bagi jajahan Perak. Yang zalim dihukum, yang mangsa dimulia, yang lemah jauh dari dihina, yang kaya diwajib menderma. Maka hiduplah rakyat jelata dalam aman sejahtera, makmur dan bahagia.

I have written an article about the descendants of Sayyid Hussain al-Faradz al-Jamalullail on wikipedia. Check it out.

I just finished wathing Agora and I find it to be a really refreshing movie. Basic knowledge of our age are taken for granted when ancient philosophers spent years trying to figure out something as simple as the relationship between the earth and the sun.

Below is a short review on my thoughts on the movie [spoiler warning].

The movie was set in old Alexandria, Egypt around 391A.D. Alexandria was part of the Roman Empire and the major theme of the movie is religious extremism (yes, we can all relate to that in this day and age), the lost of culture and knowledge. In 391A.D, it was a time when Christianity was growing rapidly and the old Roman religion was quickly dying out. Even the Emperor Theodosius himself is a Christian. The main character, Hypatia, is one of the earliest women philosophers in history. She teaches philosophy, astronomy and mathematics. Throughout the movie, various scenes of scuffles are shown between the early violent Christian fundamentalist (similar to the Taliban of our time) and other religion, mainly, the Roman pagans and the Jews (Islam only came later in 6th Century).

The fundamentalist, lead by pope Cyril, forced their agenda on everyone, to the point that some government officials had to be baptised to have a career in Roman politics. The fundamentalist were also against knowledge (they have their own version, as opposed to Hypatia’s primitive science), where they would burn all the priceless books and scrolls from Hypatia’s library, which is the Library of Alexandria.

In the end, Hypatia was killed by the fundamentalist mob, and her discovery of the eclipse and the central position of the sun was lost for a few hundred years. The same attitude towards knowledge persisted for a few decades and with that, the Roman empire went further into decline. By the 7th century, the dark ages loomed and the rest is history.

I was so taken by the notion that a discovery so profound was easily lost due to narrowmindedness and religious extremisim. In short, the key takeways from this movie is that religion must be practiced in moderation and must not be forced onto others. Knowledge should be appreciated as it is the single one thing that marks the progress of man kind.