NOOB FILM REVIEW - WALID directed by Areel Abu Bakar
SYNOPSIS (from IMDb)
A story about a kind teacher who voluntarily teaches underprivileged children to read in a quaint village. All hell broke loose when one of his students was kidnapped by gangsters from a human trafficking syndicate.
REVIEW
The introduction is kind of rushed for me. Recently I watched Equalizer 3 and the slow intro actually made us sympathise with the protagonist more.
Regardless, it was soon clear to me who Walid is, his gradual attachment to the foreign young girl, and the issue the film trying to bring forward to the audience.
The issue of education of our younger generation. This brought me straight to two short films (Ruma Ndak Bertanah and Aku Mau Skola) done by Putri Purnama Sugua from Sabah, and also in Alice directed by D-Ni OK, tackling the same issues which still see no light at the end of the tunnel.
To make it worse, they are a growing child trafficking syndicate in the village. Soon it is clear that Walid is not just any normal teacher. The film intro shows a scene of him cutting his hair in front of a mirror. Going undercover.
Areel Abu Bakar visually plays with the elements like Buddhist Temple in the background. The first shot of the film is of the Malaysian flag.
The setting of the story is the northern part of peninsular Malaysia where even though divided by an imaginary geographical border, one is connected to the other through ancestry.
On the official poster, there is a prominent red, blood-like vertical line dividing Walid (the older generation) and the little girl Aisha (the younger generation). It might be symbolizing the menace in between them and it needs to be eliminated.
And the third act is just that. A non-stop Silat crusade on the child trafficking syndicate gang (no complaints about the action choreography!). The loud cries of combat as if yearning for attention. The film needs to be seen and understood.
At first, I was disturbed by the shaky camera work. But apart from Areel cashing in the popular trend in the genre, it can be seen a little bit more than that. As the book 'Understanding Movies',
"In film, however, the viewer identifies with the lens and thus tends to fuse with the narrator. To produce first-person narration in film, the camera would have to record all the action through the eyes of the character, which, in effect, would
also make the viewer the protagonist."
Poetically it is from the viewer's perspective. It symbolizes that Malaysians are in a state of uncertainty.
The giant golden statue of an old priest shown many times pointed me to Confucius,
“If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children. ”
As the main line of this film says, "Alphabet is the light of knowledge."
Like how P. Ramlee said it in Musang Berjanggut when he revealed the answer to the main power of the great warrior Hang Tuah.
The letter Ta.
Walid received the same teaching from his father when he was small, and the cycle needs to continue for this land you flourish and not rot. In the film Kingdom of Heaven, the character Nasir says, "You reap what you sow." We need to start sowing the seeds now. Today.
And the 'syndicate' has to be stopped and eliminated.