Early test viewing feedback

The visit back to Malaysia in April 2014 had allowed me to test a few selected scenes from the edit on several unsuspecting family members and friends as chosen representatives of the film’s primary Malaysian audience. Whilst they were aware that the edit they were watching was by no means the final version that would appear in the film, it is interesting to note that many of the more mature members of the Malaysian audience whom I showed

Figure 54. Mothers and Daughters. Above: A mother waking her stepdaughter up in the classical Malay film Bawang Putih Bawang Merah (Garlic and Shallot)(S. Roomai Noor, 1959). Below: A flashback, black-and-white scene from Haruan: The Snakehead revisiting Salomah’s revelation to her mother regarding a new addition to the family.

portions of the edit to gravitated towards a particular segment: a black and white scene which is used as a flashback ‘reveal’ within the film (see Figure 54.). Of all the scenes in

Haruan: The Snakehead, this segment is the most ‘naturalistic’ in terms of its acting,

dialogue delivery and visual style, with Salomah’s mother portrayed as an archetypal evil

matriarch character, and Salomah as the victimised ‘Cinderella’ figure. This dominant, angry and brash Mother or Stepmother figure can be seen in many ‘Bollywood-type’

Figure 55. An outdoor, flashback scene from Haruan: The Snakehead. Above: Low-angle view of Salomah’s mother as she wheels Salomah and her baby away from the maternal home. Below: A close up of Salomah, pondering her baby’s fate. Whilst still in black and white, these outdoor segments are aesthetically different compared with the indoor portion of the flashback scene.

Mertuaku (My Mother-in-Law)(P. Ramlee, 1962) and Bawang Putih Bawang Merah (Garlic

and Shallot)(S. Roomai Noor, 1959). Within its mise-en-scène, this black and white

sequence has the verisimilitude of a classical Malay film - a mother and her daughter sitting on the floor, wearing a Malay ‘kurung’ blouse and a batik sarung, performing household chores. The indoor set has been designed to mimic that of a traditional Malay

kampung house, with wooden floors and walls which are adorned with woven mats and

motifs made of dried vegetation. I would posit that perhaps the Malaysian members of the audience who responded to this flashback scene identified with these verisimilitudinal features of classical Malay cinema. This would support my argument on the usage of cinematic imageries which are ‘familiar’ to an intended target audience (see Figure 54.), in this case the traditional nuances of rural Malaysian life. An audience of the completed version of the film, irrespective of their nationality may remember this scene for another reason, in that the black and white segment is immediately and abruptly different aesthetically compared with the rest of the film. Whilst the indoor imageries may be familiar to some, the outdoor portion of the flashback scene is increasingly alienating, with stylised low-angle views of Salomah’s mother and Salomah’s close-up shots dominating the frame (see Figure 55.). This change in aesthetics reflects the increasingly challenging actions onscreen, where it is suggested that a possible infanticide is in progress. I believe that this subtle, progressive dialogue between familiar and alien elements has facilitated the delivery of this difficult scene to its intended audience.

The feedback from test viewings in the UK thus far has been positive, in general. What I find immediately intriguing is the wide ethnographical variations in perception regarding what is deemed to be culturally significant or worrying within the film, and the transnational differences in responses between a Malaysian and a non-Malaysian member of the audience. For instance, my Finnish collaborators immediately relate the characters

Haruan, Deris and Djahat to their Nordic mythological beings such as sea spirits, serpents

and monsters. A Malaysian audience member, upon seeing the red painted Deris singing to his amphibian nemesis, wonders about Deris’s potential motives in possibly wanting to use the animal as an ingredient for an animistic, black magic spell to charm Salomah. A diasporic Indian viewer instantly identifies the imageries of the painted Deris to those of the characters from the Hindu Epics Ramayana and Mahabharata which, incidentally, are

also historically linked to the South East Asian’s shadow puppetry which is heavily referenced in the film (see also the link of these Epics to Wayang Kulit, on page 76). An Egyptian Muslim viewer is deeply troubled by how Deris is inadequately covered and inappropriately attired (never mind being painted red, with black fingernails) as he prostrates himself in repentance before God, and promptly questions the filmmaker’s knowledge about Islamic etiquette whilst performing prayers.

A non-Malaysian audience member of one of the test viewings has approached me recently to convey how relieved and happy she is that Salomah is finally ‘safe’ within the Asylum, away from her torments and tormentors. This feedback has convinced me that the employment of the pseudo-narrative closure in Haruan: The Snakehead is justified, and

can work for some members of the audience who require the positive reassurance. In truth, however, as with many of these cases in real life, the fate of Salomah, and many women like her remains an unknown and an unpredictable variant.

Ultimately however, the feedback which can directly inform the research questions will need to come from public viewings of Haruan: The Snakehead in Malaysia, to an unprimed Malaysian audience. The feasibility of this exercise remains unclear at this point in time. However, I am determined to try to have the film screened in Malaysia at some capacity, in order to obtain the feedback which is invaluable to this research process.