A Legendary Love (2004)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Masterful Movie

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I can be considered involved in the production of this movie. If you listen closely to the music of the movie, you will find the strings sound are real, not some cheap MIDI sound like most movies from Malaysia are using. I'm one of the violinists in there. Anyway, I am right now studying in New York, I recorded the original score right before I came here. I long to watch this movie since I walked out from the studio. So I asked my mom to send me the VCD of this movie. After finally watching this movie, I was quite happy about the seriousness of the production in a Malaysian film. However, I have never liked to watch Malaysian movies (dominated by Malay language films), because of its slow and meaningless pace. It is sad to say that this hasn't changed a bit in PGL, which I think is the greatest pity. (Even though this movie is directed by a Chinese!!) The movie could be shortened to 2 hours --- if not one and a half --- if the hyper-slow parts were being changed into a somewhat reasonable pace. But overall, I would like to say that I'm happy to see Malaysians try to make this movie a jump start (if it is) for the oh-so-rotten Malay movie scene. Like the another review, I feel the same that some elements like action (I don't like to use the word violence) could be enhanced, it could be better. Those elements are hanging in the middle of nowhere in this film. In fact, I think this issue might be caused by the strict censorship system (if there is a "system") in Malaysia. If we Malaysians want to push the film industry further to the world, PLEASE, the censorship board should reconsider the poor censorship system average that flows from time to time and, PLEASE, give filmmakers a bigger space in creativity. More budget and more money doesn't promise better movies!! Artistic quality is the most most crucial element in making a great movie!!

Now, that's what we aim to achieve for a Oscar best foreign film.... The movie begins rather symbolically, and yet when it conflicts and climaxes the feature of both (or 3) kingdoms, malacca as Islam and majapahit as buddhist / hindu (the princess doing yoga, no head covering (tudung)). I love the condition-stating scene, and the whole love story is conveyed under quite a conservative expression. No doubt the plot develops rather slowly and a little too excessive, but the director has to ensures the whole plot matures before moving to the next sequence. After all, this story is quite a complex one.... Great music! especially bagaikan sakti from Siti Nurhaliza and M. Nasir

I am totally disappointed on some Malaysian who look down to this movie. Obviously they are more interested on seeing handsome male actors and beautiful damsel in distress Hollywood actress than the movie itself.I adore Tiara's part as Puteri Gusti as she is more suitable with the part. They appear like a stick is because they are royalty. And they are supposed to be like that! (I mean, polished) Can you imagine a bubbly and clumsy princess with no sense of grace. She even had to do hard work to be like a royalty! The film is satisfying since this is the first malay film I've seen in the cinema. However, the language held a mild usage of old Malay. But most Malaysian wont understand them if they put all of them like prosa tradisional in malay literature text book.Sofia Jane who plays as Tun Teja makes a good impression as a jealous wife. However the sultan is so cynical to me. (Especially the scene where the camera focused on his teeth..... .... ....)The bad part is the leaf scene. The person who plays as Orang Kaya had a bad sense of imagination. His eyes don't actually follows when the leaf fall on the ground.However, the movie don't show much of the people at Java. I know that Majapahit is a great country at that time. But the movie shows little on that. The fighting scene with the eclipse is the obvious flaw in the movie and what the use of the huge boulder? I was wondering if they decide to clone Stonehenge for all the sudden.Last and not least, the English subtitle in the cinema. I confess that the person had bad sense of literature. Like the curse of 'Memuntahkan Darah' translated as 'vomiting blood'. It is true that a person would be cursed when seeing the princess but logically, they should put 'death' instead.Through lots of version of Puteri Gunung Ledang that I've read. There was a version that says the Sultan's wife is dead and he have to find another wife and wanted a wife that is more different than average princess. Thus he chooses the princess of Mount Ledang. and there was a part where he didn't try to kill his son and refuse the offer of marrying her.The flying keris is cool! and the part where Gusti change her appearance to an old lady with gloomy background. It suits the scene!The silat scene at the beginning of the movie really fascinates me. It was less than what I've expected. The sounds, the choreography was magnifique!! I always see in most malay movie which had dumb kung fu acts with lousy sound effect. To be honest, it was wonderful than Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.But it lasted until the fighting eclipse scene. It was disappointing.I am expecting more when they had some epic movie in future. I was wondering if they might interested on making the Langkawi famous myth about Mahsuri.I am agree that Malaysian movie industry is starting to bloom and they should have spent more time on perfecting their skills on catching the scene and put them perfectly in story lines and actors and actress than focusing on budgets, make ups and stupid computer generated scenes.... they wont work... honestly.Finally, we can see Malay film that is good in quality.

This handsomely mounted period epic set during the 16th century Malaccan empire is Malaysia's most expensive film at US$5M. The princess of Majapahit, Retno Dumillah, exiles herself to the Malaccan peak of Mount Ophir to entreat the company of her lover, the Malaccan warrior Hang Tuah. This is in open defiance of her brother, Gusti Adipati, the ruler of Majapahit, who had intended to marry her to a prince of the rival Demak empire. Adipati then decides to forge an alliance with the Malaccan sultanate instead by offering his sister as bride to the reigning Sultan, Mahmud. Hang Tuah's allegiance to duty is legendary. He slew his best friend, Hang Jebat, many years prior on the Sultan Mansor's orders. However, the Sultan Mahmud, a preening and decadent ruler, is a pale shadow of the glorious lineage of Malaccan royalty. Should Hang Tuah banish forever his love in favor of a vainglorious tyrant?Production values are excellent in general. Picture overall has a glossy, polished sheen. Some inexperience in photography is evident – an intruding palm frond at the edges of the frame, actors half cut off at the sides, shot suddenly partially blocked by the back of an actor in front of the camera (!). The period milieu and mise-en-scene are gorgeous, the palace rituals and traditional malay / javanese speech appear authentic. Nice background research there. The music is excellent with a nice mix of western strings and Malay traditional instruments like the sruling during the love scenes and rebana in the palace scenes. The acting is uniformly above par across the board, especially M. Nasir as the legendary warrior, Hang Tuah. Malaysian actors are some of the finest in this region and Nasir carries a screen presence that conveys the nobility of this most famous of perwira melayu. It is also nice to see Rahim Razali, a household screen personality, in an amiable performance as the Tok Bendahara. Tiara Jacquelina as the titular princess is adequately winsome. The script, however, does not allow her to show why she was such a sought after woman. Sofia Jane appears more assured as the Sultan's wife. Adlin Ramlee's alternately cocky, languid and foppish portrayal of Sultan Mahmud takes some getting used to, but in retrospect, it seems about right. Both the princess and the sultan get a chance to shine with a neat verbal confrontation near the end. The standout is Christine Hakim who, quite frankly, is a class act. Alex Komang is a washout in a poorly written role as the Majapahit prince, consisting exclusively of sneers and scowls.The story overall could do with a lot more dramatic urgency. Many sequences look thrown in to appease the multiplex crowd, inserted without attention to the overall arc of the story. An earlier sequence of Hang Tuah taking on a posse of 'lanun darat' is very well done. However, there is a gratuitous action sequence which comes in so far off leftfield, involving some silly 70s- style kungfu fighting, that threatens to derail the entire film. This is the sort of action sequence where a fighter slashes his dagger in the air and ten fireballs erupt around him from the ground. Although this was meant as a 'battle of the mind', the overall effect is laughably cheesy. Worse, the whole sequence is arbitrarily inserted at a most inappropriate part of the narrative – there is no buildup and aftermath. Likewise, CGI superimposition of the 'seven requests of the princess', floating across the screen like a ticker tape, is ungainly. Elsewhere, instead of character driven scenes, we get actors who pose and pose while mouthing purple prose. Many issues are unfocused as a result. Why and how did Hang Tuah and Dumillah fall in love? There are nice scenes of the couple riding horseback, doing an intricate courtship dance, at a lake. They look pretty, like postcards of two people in love, but the scenes lack actual resonance. At one point, Hang Tuah shows the princess his big Keris; she stares in awe at it. Unfortunately, no character driven dialog. The crucial scene where Hang Tuah meets his beloved atop Mount Ophir starts off nicely: like a breathless teenager hopelessly late for a date, he blurts: 'Dah tunggu lama ke?' ('Been waiting long?'). However, this is proceeded by endless swooping, panning and swirling of the camera around the actors including editing that I believe violate the 180 degree rule. All that 'technique' is frankly distracting. What's wrong with action-reaction, medium two shots and close-ups anyway? There are more than several shots where the emphasis was more on a sunset or a waterfall than the characters themselves. Anyway, the lovers go at it with dialog cribbed from a Harlequin romance. Whither the inner conflict of the noble warrior between love and duty? We do get a solitary soliloquy of sorts: Hang Tuah talking to his reflection in a puddle of water like a refugee from an Ingmar Bergman film, and that's it. Why the great animosity between Hang Tuah and the Java prince? The film offers absolutely no exposition there.Being a prestige film, direction is serious and high minded. However, this is largely betrayed by a dearth of psychological depth and dramatic weight. A certain lack of joie-de-vivre permeates the film, making one wish that the late great P. Ramlee could lend his charismatic presence to the whole proceedings.The film ends poetically with Hang Tuah rushing up Mount Ophir in a sequence of solemn and hushed silence, in a moment of cathartic realization and sadness. The broad strokes for a grand tragedy are all there, but the interlocking narrative is unfocused. It's like hearing bits and pieces of a symphony from a distance. It's a shame: the money saved from that silly bit of aerial kungfu fighting could have gone towards additional scenes between the two main characters – the final sequence could have had much more impact.