Author｜謝鎮逸 Yizai Seah
In collaboration with the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, the 27th annual Taipei Film Festival is launching a new program, the ”New Southbound Vision,” showcasing five outstanding international films from Southeast Asia and South Asia. Among the chosen works is Macai, a Malaysian film that employs a quintessential road movie format to assemble a pan-Asian visual aesthetic.
The plot describes the story of Siam, an Indian man involved in drug trafficking who accidentally loses methamphetamine after a one-night stand. In order to avoid revenge from the drug lord, Ibu (meaning "mother" in Malay), Siam must solve the problem within three days. In desperation, Siam, along with his two friends, the fat and bald Oosi and the shrewd and cunning Jack, set out on a desperate journey, attempt to cross the border in a stolen car, and kidnap a wealthy Chinese boy named Ah Seng, in hopes of raising money for the ransom on Siam’s life. However, troubles occur one after another, and the three people’s fates are increasingly involved with irreversible predicaments.
The film is set in Lingapura, a made-up country set in a fictional Malaysia. The other side that the characters are trying to reach is the real Singapore. This deliberate comparison can also be seen from the Malay name for Singapore, “Singapura”. In fact, there are many Malaysian workers who cross the border to Singapore, and the rich and powerful “others” become the utopian contrast that the film intends to create. That said, the various settings and plots in the film are far from baseless. The film uses a mix of Tamil, Malay, and English in conversation; music of various languages are broadcast on car radios; various ethnic groups share the same food culture; the characters even encounter roadside inspections and bribe police officers. This is the daily life for every Malay citizen.
Despite being the third largest ethnic group in Malaysia, the Indian community only accounts for 7% of the country's total population, and has long been severely neglected in society. Many Indian Malaysians view sought-after professions like doctors and lawyers as a ticket to social mobility, with high school entrance exams often serving as a crucial step toward advancement. However, although Malaysia has a strong economy among developing countries, this prosperity has never been shared with a majority of its citizens. "Macai" is not a native word in Tamil. In spoken language in Malaysia, Singapore and other localities, it means "subordinate" or "errand runner", a class-laden term. In the film, Siam is originally portrayed as a model student. However, after reaching adulthood, he is only able to do underground work as a ground runner. This suggests a form of self-exile within an Indian community where upward mobility is already difficult, pointing to the perpetually existing conditions within the structure of poverty.
Emerging around the turn of the millennium and still celebrated today, the Malaysian New Wave has long been regarded as a pioneering force embodying the spirit of Malaysian independent cinema. However, among the list of these auteur directors, Indian filmmakers are absent. Indian creators have not only been excluded within the system, but have also remained unseen outside it. The emergence of director Shanjey Kumar Perumal in this uneven Malaysian cinematic landscape has undoubtedly filled a long-overdue seat. Having long focused on the Indian community, his 2015 debut feature Jagat drew attention for its rare focus on Indian subjects.
Ten years later, he has now completed his Tamil trilogy. This year, Perumal saw the successive releases in Malaysia of Jagat, his second feature Fire on Water (2024) — presented in a re-edited version under the new title Blues — as well as his latest work Macai. To a large extent, this series of screenings has mapped out an important trajectory for the development of Indian Malaysian cinema. However, the narrative style of this trilogy has always been in an awkward position between commercial marketability and artistic aesthetics. On one hand, it portrays the social realist struggles of a marginalized minority community, while on the other, it seeks to incorporate hybrid genres, such as commercial films and comedies that can appeal to the market.
Interestingly, the themes of the trilogy all implicitly point toward a logic shaped by “choices” and “decisions.” Thus, we might also imagine that Appoy — the Indian Malaysian boy in Jagat who grew up in the 1990s, fond of playing pranks and watching gangster films — would either become the disillusioned filmmaker in Fire on Water, or turn into the small-time gangster in Macai. Both paths, in their own subtle and unexpected ways, embody the trajectory of fate for the Indian Malaysian community.
Looking back at his 2009 short film Machai, which won first prize at the BMW Shorties in Malaysia, one can already see the prototype of the narrative model used in Macai, in both its depiction of the divergences that arise during the execution of the mission and the resolutions reached through the choices made. Macai blends elements of gangster films, road movies, suspense, and crime genres. Together with this distinctive cinematography and the familiar use of cultural settings, the film more or less draws upon and references various classic films. In regions where the film industry lags behind, however, such stylistic patchwork often becomes one of the quickest channels that these films can be readily identified by the international community. After all, when the cultural connotations of an unfamiliar “other” cannot be immediately understood, using its external form as the primary means of identification remains an undeniably effective approach.
Furthermore, although the “fictional country” in Macai is no more than a playful device to evade national film censorship, its fugitive narrative — built on an imaginary nation, a blend of multiple genres, and a slightly exaggerated style — employs a naming strategy that creates an alternate parallel relation. This approach has the potential to transcend the imagery of established social realism and cinematic realism, deviating from uninformed and narrow critiques of the nation-group relation. Much like the hallucinatory state that characters enter after taking drugs in the film, it simultaneously blurs all objects that ought to be rationally recognized, thereby liberating fixed references such as “Indian” and “Malaysian” in film’s sex scenes and nightclub parties.
The film begins and ends with an allegorical scene in which the protagonist, Siam, stands at the end of a misty, dawn lit road and comes face-to-face with Varahi, one of the seven mother goddesses in Hinduism. With the head of a boar and the body of a human, Varahi is naturally fierce yet endowed with protective power. She also stands as a symbol of fearlessness, the struggle against evil, and the bravery needed to triumph over darkness. Perhaps Siam’s struggle between the underworld and the ordinary world, the film’s depiction of day and night, and the commercialization and artistry of Malaysian Indian films are all instances of wandering between two sides, making choices and seeking ways for the marginalized community to survive between a rock and a hard place.