Merantau is a long-waited fighting film, featuring Indonesian traditional martial art, silat. We haven't had any film of this genre since
since years ago, and our fighting hero Barry Prima has abandoned the ship and taken a magnificent role as a transgender father in a family drama. So when British director and writer Gary Evans said he has found a potential young hero in a true silat 'fighter', Iko Uwais, we were all excited.
Now a word or so about 'merantau'. The Minangkabau people, famous for their silat and their business instinct, are matrilineal, unlike the strictly patrilineal Bataks, the loosely patrilineal the Manadonese, or the Javanese that don't care about any of that. This means money and properties are inherited by the girls, and men won't get any; they must first show their worth by 'merantau' – leaving their family behind, finding their fortune and building themselves a name in other lands. Before returning and marrying an heiress, of course.
And so the main character, Yuda, decided to leave his family's peaceful tomato farm and try his luck in Jakarta as a silat teacher – and ended up proving to us once again that 'rural is good, urban is bad, but evil is foreign'. In short, Yuda got himself involved with two Caucasian human traffickers, when he tried to help a badmouthed erotic dancer from a pimp wanting to sell her to the foreigners. (Why, exactly, Yuda wanted to help her when she's so vile towards him for interfering with her life?) Ha.
Frankly speaking, apart from the interesting view on Minangkabau traditions and landscape and a rather shocking ending, I cannot say much about the plot. (Is the homoeroticism between the two antagonists a subplot, I wonder?) And this film is almost torturingly long: perhaps it's because Evans wrote, directed, and edited the film himself. The duration is a sign left by his ego, when a sane-headed other person could help him editing parts that needn't be there so that the pace could be increased a bit.
I also wish they had chosen a better child actor to play Adit; their choice was annoying. They could have also smoothed up the dialogs a bit, the words having been translated from Evans' script in English. Some of the sentences felt so unnatural, coming from the mouth of someone in distress or someone of a particular social class. And I don't think anyone in Indonesia would try to have an interlocal from a phonebooth; they would try a wartel (telecommunication shop) instead. And it would be more logical for Yuda, a good Muslim boy from West Sumatra, to go to a mosque to find a place to sleep (where he knew he would have access to water for bathing and taking ablution for praying) than spending the nights secretly in an unfinished building project. Just some, you know, natural details. Strange that they forgot such details, when the life in West Sumatra was portrayed with a great touch of realism, like Yuda eating with one knee folded on the chair, looking so naturally at home.
But all in all, this film is very much welcome, a beginning of a series of action films to be starred by Iko (Evans wanted to make him some kind of our Bruce Lee). The martial arts choreography deserves a thumbs up, with the cameras seemingly know very well which angles can show the best of silat movements.
Now a word or so about 'merantau'. The Minangkabau people, famous for their silat and their business instinct, are matrilineal, unlike the strictly patrilineal Bataks, the loosely patrilineal the Manadonese, or the Javanese that don't care about any of that. This means money and properties are inherited by the girls, and men won't get any; they must first show their worth by 'merantau' – leaving their family behind, finding their fortune and building themselves a name in other lands. Before returning and marrying an heiress, of course.
And so the main character, Yuda, decided to leave his family's peaceful tomato farm and try his luck in Jakarta as a silat teacher – and ended up proving to us once again that 'rural is good, urban is bad, but evil is foreign'. In short, Yuda got himself involved with two Caucasian human traffickers, when he tried to help a badmouthed erotic dancer from a pimp wanting to sell her to the foreigners. (Why, exactly, Yuda wanted to help her when she's so vile towards him for interfering with her life?) Ha.
Frankly speaking, apart from the interesting view on Minangkabau traditions and landscape and a rather shocking ending, I cannot say much about the plot. (Is the homoeroticism between the two antagonists a subplot, I wonder?) And this film is almost torturingly long: perhaps it's because Evans wrote, directed, and edited the film himself. The duration is a sign left by his ego, when a sane-headed other person could help him editing parts that needn't be there so that the pace could be increased a bit.
I also wish they had chosen a better child actor to play Adit; their choice was annoying. They could have also smoothed up the dialogs a bit, the words having been translated from Evans' script in English. Some of the sentences felt so unnatural, coming from the mouth of someone in distress or someone of a particular social class. And I don't think anyone in Indonesia would try to have an interlocal from a phonebooth; they would try a wartel (telecommunication shop) instead. And it would be more logical for Yuda, a good Muslim boy from West Sumatra, to go to a mosque to find a place to sleep (where he knew he would have access to water for bathing and taking ablution for praying) than spending the nights secretly in an unfinished building project. Just some, you know, natural details. Strange that they forgot such details, when the life in West Sumatra was portrayed with a great touch of realism, like Yuda eating with one knee folded on the chair, looking so naturally at home.
But all in all, this film is very much welcome, a beginning of a series of action films to be starred by Iko (Evans wanted to make him some kind of our Bruce Lee). The martial arts choreography deserves a thumbs up, with the cameras seemingly know very well which angles can show the best of silat movements.