Curious Objects

Kaki Bakar

An honest and hardworking father (Khalid Salleh) dispenses worldly wisdom to his son (Ngasrizal Ngasri), teaches him to recite the Koran, and takes him as trusted accomplice in the man’s barn-burning missions. Outcast from one unfriendly village, the family soon moves to another, where the father finds work until a perceived injury to dignity compels him to administer his unique brand of justice—as long as the adoring son remains loyal accomplice. Long himself the proud outcast of the Malay mainstream cinema, U-Wei Haji Shaari has turned his directorial attention from the empty feminist sloganeering of his previous works to an authentic study of masculine grief and filial piety; this movie is his most mature and affecting; it’s a proud, lean masterpiece. U-Wei adapted the script from a short story of William Faulkner, but took Faulkner’s post-Civil War white sharecropper and made him a modern-day Javanese laborer, losing neither the grease nor the grit of the written narrative. The gamelan piece and the man’s soulful singing reach high into the pitch-blackened sky; they merge into a rueful requiem to anguished pride, a piercing howl of grief. Khalid Salleh’s portrayal of the man the world refuses to understand is simultaneously understated and moving; he dignifies defeat. The camera studiously massages the father’s clouded face, searching for the spontaneous immediacies of reactions, gestures, glances, but he coldly reveals none: the reactions are protracted and studied, the gestures expressionless and restrained, the glances leery and timid. But like the fire ravaging the barns, the smoldered, seething rage finally explodes with violent menace. In Malay.