Chow Kit (2012)

Apa khabar? How have you been doing? It has been quite sometime since I last reviewed a Malaysian movie so that's what I want to do in this post, and I think you will all be pleased that today I'm going to review a movie that had just come out in the cinemas recently, around two months ago, instead of my usual fares of flicks that are more older. 

I find it odd that most of the movies that I have reviewed in this blog are the ones that I watched through random encounters such as from channel surfing on Astro, and my encounter with this movie occurred from an almost similar happenstance. I was out with my friends, and they had wanted to rewatch The Avengers. But upon arriving at the cinema, we found out that the tickets for all the showings for the rest of that day was out. Disappointed, we decided to watch another movie instead. Going through the listing, we saw the a movie titled 'Chow Kit' and decided that that's the movie we wanted to watch. Not much logic behind the call, I know, but I have an inkling that it was because of the place that the movie is set in (Chow Kit is an area which is considered to be the seedy underbelly of  KL), they might have thought it was one of those gangster movies in the vein of KL Gangster and KL Drift. Not my cup of tea, of course, but I was too tired to protest and the rest of the movies available sucked. And if I had to watch a lousy movie, I'd rather my RM 10 goes to local moviemakers.

So we went inside, and the movie started. And wow, was I surprised from the opening shots! It opened with  a cold opener of a group of children chasing a man with two by fours along the dilapidated store fronts of Chow Kit, and then into the dingy backalleys. They finally have him surrounded, but the man takes out a gun and shoots one of them in the arm. The leader of the pack drops him with a whack, and they all viciously pounced on him with their planks and by good ol' stomp on the head. It is a very visceral scene that also makes the audience wonder about the events leading up to it, and the opener effectively jolts the audience into the realisation that 'Chow Kit' is not like anything that they have seen from any other Malaysian film makers. 

The plot itself is unusual in that it deals with a subsection of the Malaysian society that is rarely featured on film; the seedy underbelly of Kuala Lumpur, drug addicts and dealers, transvestites, prostitutes and pimps and also the unfortunate children of the prostitutes. And when I say rarely featured, I mean featured in a realistic, kitchen-sink manner without glorifying nor condemning them. 

The movie itself is actually two separate stories with the  first story showing the daily lives of a group of the above-mentioned children of prostitutes, their endeavours to find money, and their reaction when one of them, the only female member in the gang, is sexually-assaulted by her mother's boyfriend. The other story concerns two friends; one a recent former convict and gangster, the other a snatch thief, who are looking to score a last payout before leaving the criminal world and to help the latter pay for his mother's surgery. But as the poet Robert Blake wrote, "the best laid schemes of mice and men go often awry" so do the two friends' plan. They are repeatedly double-crossed by the people they deal with, and their predicament keeps escalating; taking them further away from that last payout and putting their lives in danger. The two stories are only connected by the appearance of a number of characters.

Now what I love about this movie is the realism with which the the movie is presented. Malaysian films are reliant on the need to fluff them up, be it with cringe-worthy humour and comic relief, an unnecessary love interest, far-fetched drama or tear-jerker moments; which I find cheap and hammy. That is why I find it refreshing to watch a Malaysian movie that eschews all these to portray things as they are and to just simply let the audience decide for themselves what to feel. And in most of the scenes, I was left not knowing what exactly to feel, even in the more touching scenes. After all, the characters are not exactly blameless for the predicaments that they get into; they are prostitutes and criminals. That the film is successful in producing these layers of reactions and emotions is a testament to the makers' refusal to cheapen the movie by dumbing it down, and also to the depth of the writing.

Another aspect to this realism that I find refreshing is with the dialogue. Now let me just tell you a little bit about my experience as a cinephile. When watching Hollywood and foreign movies alike with adult language, I had wondered to myself whether this sort of thing is ever going to happen in a Malaysian movie. Not that I am glorifying crass and want swear words to be heard in every other line, but purely for the fact that I think it more accurately mirrors the society's speech. Let's not kid ourselves, almost everyone swear when talking nowadays, and so do I. And not just the swearing, I'm also talking about the register of our daily speech. In short, I find the dialogue in Malaysian movies; specifically Malay movies, unrealistic, as if the movies are written by non-native Bahasa Melayu speakers. Anyway, to get back to my point, I had always thought that swearing in our movies is not going to happen in my lifetime. I mean, our damned politicians banned a documentary, for God's sake. That's what you get for letting people who have no interest and knowledge in arts and film regulate any artistic branches. 

So understand my amusement and bewilderment when the first cussing was uttered in the movie; "Babi lah kau". Now you might wonder what the hell I'm giggling like a school girl for; it's just a swear word. I was kind of shocked because that line, I repeat, the first curse to be spoken by any of the characters in the movie, was uttered by one of the prostitutes' children to his playground enemy. Yup, we went straight from the text-book dialogue in our movies to children swearing in them in just one movie. The adults didn't even get a chance. It's as if a human civilisation, which has no mode of vehicular transportation, were to suddenly invent a rocketship within the duration of one lazy weekend. That's why I was really amused. Fortunately the adult characters get their fair share of swearing in the movie later, and swearing is not something that I'm not used to everyday, to actually see and hear it in a Malaysian movie is something that I was strangely proud of, in the sense that there are Malaysian film makers who want to embrace realism in their movies, instead of shying away from it and covering it with fluff.

Still on the topic of realism, this movie is also realistic in its steely portrayal of the seedy underbelly of society. To make it easier, I'll just list down most of the criminal activities that are portrayed in this movie:

- incest, sexual act and prostitution

- child rape (one of the most graphic scenes of the movie)

- drug and alcohol use

- theft and snatch-theft

- drug deals

- physical violence

- oh, there's also a severed head thrown in for good measure

I repeat, although it is quite a long list, they are not in anyway portrayed in a manner that glorifies them. The audience is simply presented with them, and it is the audience alone who should decide what to feel about them. Kudos to the filmmakers for treating us like adults who are able to think for ourselves, for a change.

Which brings me to my next point, how on earth did they sneak this movie past the censorship board?! I am simply amazed at their audacity in getting it into Malaysian movie cinemas, risking their careers and reputation so we can enjoy it. I can't imagine the furore and the pitchfork carrying frenzy the Malaysian society will get into, upon learning that a movie about this underground subsection of the society has been released. The demonstrations, the holier-than-thou Facebook status posts calling for all devout Muslims to boycott this movie, the politicians chiming in to make sure that they are seen as morally righteous by their potential voters. All without having once seen the movie. I shudder at the thought. Or maybe FINAS themselves have adapted to the times and current movie-goers' matured sensitivity and I have simply given them too little credit. After all, the musical 'The Producers' (2005) was shown uncut in Malaysian cinemas despite its overt portrayal of gay men, and that was seven years ago.

However, what happened was the complete opposite of getting the attention of the public, even the negative kind. I talked to a friend who had talked to 'Chow Kit's' producers and the people involved in the making, and he told me that the movie did not make profit. The usual course of action when learning that yet another good Malaysian movie has finished its theatrical run barely noticed by Malaysian movie-goers is to criticise them for ignoring a gem in favour of frivolous comedy or romance movies, but for 'Chow Kit', I'm gonna cut the usual suspects a slack. Prior to going to the cinema with my friends, I had known literally nothing whatsoever about it, which is unusual for me. At the very least, I would learn of the title and the main actors of any recent Malaysian Malay movies from simply being around people and listening to them talking or through the internet, even if I have no intention of catching these movies. But not 'Chow Kit', not a word nor a squeak, which means the movie lacked promotion. I wonder what's up with this. I know that it did not have a sizeable production budget which means that its promotional  budget might have been even more miniscule, but these days you need promotion to ensure the success of any project intended for an audience, and although promotional and advertising works cost money, you need to spend money to make even more money. Could it be that they avoided promoting it to avoid attracting unwanted attention, the kind I mentioned above? Who knows. I hope they are going to get the movie on DVD so I can get a copy for my movie collection.

The GOOD: 

- the lead child actor is wonderful. Brooding and quite handsome. Hopefully he stays in the industry when he grows up

The BAD: sometimes the low-budget makes the more technically challenging to shoot scenes look laughable, like the Mexican stand-off scene

My VERDICT: this movie gets a 7.5/10
TRIVIA: The soundtrack to this movie is composed by Butterfingers' Loque. Maybe that's where their promotional budget went to?