Alone – If our political situation was a film
The best stories are from real life.
The 2013 film, 'The Butler', which was produced and directed by Lee Daniels, was inspired by real life.
It was co-starred by Oprah Winfrey who earned a Bafta - the British equivalent of an Academy Award - nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, for her portrayal of the wife of the black White House butler named Eugene Allen.
Allen served the Oval Office from the Eisenhower to the Reagan administrations - before and after the civil rights movement.
The best stories are from real life.
The 2013 film, 'The Butler', which was produced and directed by Lee Daniels, was inspired by real life.
It was co-starred by Oprah Winfrey who earned a Bafta - the British equivalent of an Academy Award - nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, for her portrayal of the wife of the black White House butler named Eugene Allen.
Allen served the Oval Office from the Eisenhower to the Reagan administrations - before and after the civil rights movement.
The 2013 film, 'Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom' was the last among many films and documentaries to chronicle the life of South African anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela.
This one, which gave use the Oscar-nominated theme song 'Ordinary Love', by U2, was based on his autobiography.
Even though the film was about Madiba, played brilliantly by the dashing Idris Elba, a pivotal scene which captured the horror of 27 years of Mandela’s incarceration was perhaps that involving Naomie Harris' character, Winnie Madikizela.
In the scene, Winnie, hauled up and detained in solitary confinement for eighteen months is on the edge of insanity. Laying on her bare cell she pleads to her sole companion – a cockroach - not to leave her.
In one fell sweep you want to know more about her and empathise with her enough that you don’t dismiss her for her divorce from our hero, Mandela after his release.
Film for propaganda
Films are powerful tools to convey stories and lives compressed into palatable dosages.
Countries in the west recognise and utilise this powerful medium, and use them even to push propaganda.
Some propaganda emerge quite brazenly as in the case of 'Argo' , which won the Oscar for Best Picture, or ' Life of Pi ' which won Ang Lee the Oscar for Best Director and 'Django Unchained' where Quentin Tarantino walked away with the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Although film has been seen largely as having a soft impact on local audiences, Malaysia’s film heritage, too, is not insignificant. What we have is a platform to similarly pass on lessons from our past, to educate, inspire, entertain and enrich our society.
P Ramlee and Nordin Ahmad films, kung fu and Shaolin films as well as Bollywood melodramas were prominent features of our childhood and adolescent years, but somehow, when we grow up the role of film in our lives fall into the abyss.
Even so, Malaysians are surrounded by political real-life drama which if turned into films, would range from the gripping, unintentionally Bollywood-esque to the farcical, all in High Definition.
In films, leading men past their expiry dates can be recycled in homage series (think The Expendeables and RED – Retired Extremely Dangerous – and the likes of over the hill superstars Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris and Bruce Willis). Similarly, Malaysian politicians never expire, but only graduate to become veterans.
Men who seem to believe their prime is in their 70s can look to The Godfather films for validation; that the Don must survive as long as earthly possible before passing the reins of power within the family.
Movies also come with taglines. The 1992 film Alien 3’s memorable tagline was "The Bitch is back" while the 2000 animated feature 'Chicken Run' committed itself to the memories of film buffs with the punny tagline "Escape of die frying".
One man alone
One fitting tagline for a film about our current political situation would be just one word – 'Alone'.
But in 2007, the tagline for Will Smith’s 'I am Legend' was "The last man on earth is not alone". Sadly, plagiarism is frowned upon on the international stage.
F ortunately, the theme of being alone is a popular one in the world of film. Two significant films were made with the theme in 2003 – which sadly meant only one could have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
The one which lost out, 'All is Lost', was nominated instead for an Oscar for Best Sound Editing despite being arguably a better film and receiving a standing ovation when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
The JC Chandor film featured the once-super dashing Robert Redford in all his aged glory, playing a man alone lost at sea. It had no dialogue, other than a short voiceover by the protagonist reading a letter.
This perhaps made it less endearing compared to Sandra Bullock, who plays a biomedical engineer thrown into the cinematically-appealing realm of outer space.
Like Redford, she is alone in the elements after a cloud of debris hit her space shuttle, in the highly-acclaimed, but pop feature by co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron, 'Gravity'.
These two films can perhaps encapsulate our current political situation; a lone astronaut who gets help from the start, albeit sometimes in only her head, and a lone sailer who finds salvation only after he is finally able to face death.
Life, it seems, has all the basic plots which films imitate. How we end the story is up to us and the temporal ending is not without consequences.
Those who precede us may show us how a good ending should look like, a crucial tip for when we will all be standing alone to be ultimately judged.
NUSRAT HAFIZAH is an independent filmmaker.
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Alone – If our political situation was a film
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