Rumah Hitam

My friend and I was invited to watch a Premiere Show of a locally produced TeleMovie titled Rumah Hitam, created by Ela Sabah and produced by Avicraft Production. Its a story about a girl who stayed with her grandmother; I assume that her parents died and her grandmother took care of her, but this ungrateful girl is denying that the old woman is her grandmother. Throughout the movie, she keep calling her grandmother “Mak Timah” as if she is just a servant. The grandmother however, despite being treated like an outsider, would tried her very best to cater to this girl’s whim and tantrum. It sadden me to watch the movie, not because of the story but because of the filming, the soundtrack used, the actor was bad, seriously, except for two actresses who played their character very well. Everything else is a sad story.

First of all, everyone would agree with me that all Sabahan talk very fast, there’s no denying it. All of my West Malaysian friend said so. I remember one of them saying that West Malaysian talk slow with a bit of “swaying”, we Sabahan talk like a speeding bullet train. I know you guys can relate to that. I can understand that the movie production wanted to keep that Sabahan way of communication, but it would help tremendously if they slow down a bit without jeopardising the slang. The first time the girl’s best friend was talking I was like what? What did she said? Then it hit me, she was saying “Nenek kau nanti tidak marah?” and she said this superfast!

There was this scene where the grandmother was checking and counting her saving which she hide under her pillow. From what I can understand, she may have a few saving and don’t want the granddaughter to know how much she have saved. Now, I only assumed that, because that scene was quiet, very quiet. We don’t really know how much is her saving. We don’t know what’s the savings are for. We don’t know why she keep a lookout from her granddaughter. It would be very helpful if she would mumble something about it, or at least zoom in on how much savings that she have. In the end, I have to fill in whatever the grandmother was thinking. She could be thinking,

“Bila la saya punya simpanan mau bertambah ni? Balik-balik cucu saya minta, lambat la saya mau merasa iPhone 3Gs ni. Saya pun mau juga merasa pakai henpon canggih ni.”

Don’t you think so?

There was one scene where the grandmother was sweeping the lawn. I’m not a videographer or anything but instead of focussing on the grandmother sweeping on one angle, then switching angle to show that the lawn was wide and back again on the same first angle, I think it would be much better if they show the grandmother sweeping showing the wide lawn and do panning to show the grandmother turned her back the house, then come the granddaughter scolding her. What’s the point of changing of angle twice? Other than sweeping, it’s just showing how the granddaughter scold her grandmother.

The scene where the granddaughter was already grown up, her best friend was pregnant and the boyfriend didn’t want to be responsible for it. They need to do more on that scene. Here they are, went looking for the guy, manage to catch him, and the guy didn’t even put up much fight and went along together with the group. Now, if I were to face that situation, I would probably throw a few punch before being subdued by my captor, you know, the “I will not got down without a fight” situation. Instead, all I see was

“Hey what is this.”

“Oh we want to take you home. You must be held responsible for getting your girlfriend pregnant.”

“Oh OK. Then I’ll surrender to you guys since there are a few of you guys and I sure hell not gonna hit a woman. Can we act as if I’m putting up some fight?”

“Oh yeah sure, can bah if you.“

That was it. Pretty convincing huh? NOT!

Oh, there was this scene where Mak Timah’s ex-husband came looking for her. The expression on his face looked more like a serial grandmother rapist who found another victim and not a husband who found out that the woman was his wife that he had left and forgotten.

I think the main problem for this production was the old “as long it can sell” mindset as mention in Wachemulau’s blog post, I’m not a pro in creating a movie but from what I learned from one semester of video production, I think there was a lack of discussion or vision from the producer. I’m not condemning the production but merely want to voice out my opinion. I’m hoping the production company would take note of this a strive to create even better production. Take a look at the trailer.

I must commend the girl who played the granddaughter for an excellent acting job, and also to the actor playing the grandmother. Everything else, still need a lot of improvement.

Just my though. Sorry for telling the truth..

Please follow and like us: