Puteri Gunung Ledang

I watched "Puteri Gunung Ledang" on Saturday at Tanjung Golden Village Cinema, KLCC with The Medicine Man.

Synopsis

Set in 15th century Malacca, this love story begins when Princess Gusti Dumilah sails away from her war torn homeland of Majapahit in search of her love, Admiral Hang Tuah, in Malacca. However, against the Princess’ will, her brother Gusti Adipati, arranges for her to be married off to the Sultan of Malacca in the hope that the Sultan will protect them from Pangeran Demak’s attacks on Majapahit.

Hang Tuah, upon receiving the news of the impending wedding carries on his loyal duties, for his loyalty lies strongly with the Sultan and the State. He leads a party up the challenging Gunung Ledang to ask Princess Gusti for her hand in marriage, on behalf of the Sultan. Hurt and angry, Princess Gusti agrees to the marriage, on condition that the Sultan grants her seven wishes.

Before the Sultan can grant the Princess her final wish, she appears and rebukes him. The Sultan, hurt and angry, casts a curse on the Princess to live in Gunung Ledang, never to be seen by another human being again…

My Review

To begin with, I love movies that have princes and princesses in them - so it gets my thumbs up.

Objectively, of course, I believe the movie has an excellent cinematography and well written script. The dialogues and movements may be slow in some parts - but that's because the script was written poetically. For example, the love dance between the lovers. There were no dialogues - just meeting of the eyes and synchronising of the movements that are rythmic. It was so poetic and abstract - it says a lot without a word. You need a brain to decipher the messages that are being communicated by the complexities of each gesture - just like a dance. If you don't want to think hard, you probably won't enjoy the movie.

I am just sad that the movie has a bitter ending - I just hope that the two lovers are reunited in the after-life, because the ending drove me to tears.

I admire the princess' guts in turning the king's marriage proposal down. She knows her priority and fights for her love. She's the real warrior - a fighter, and very intelligent too. This, judging from the riddles she had created that the king had to call all his intelligentsia to decipher the meaning - the riddles whose answers would tell the king what he had to fulfill in order for her to accept his marriage proposal.

The King was hesitant at first to fulfill her last request - a bowl of his son's blood. But in the end he succumbed to his lust and desire for the Javanese princess.

On the other hand, I don't admire Hang Tuah. He should have fought for his right to love - he definitely didn't understand his real priority in life. Loyalty to the villain king is more important than having the right to love? How can he be a hero if he can't even fight for the one he truly loves. This, an admirable trait for our legendary Malay hero? No wonder a good number of Malay men are aimless, lacking ambition and lacking understanding in managing their priorities.

The King's succumbing to his desires that he was willing to even kill his own flesh and blood to get Puteri Gunung Ledang, was really low. He was willing to marry another, after all that difficulty in winning Tun Teja's love as I remember the story, he had to even kidnap her. But once his, she amounts to nothing?

This epitomises our society where a number of men easily succumbed to lust and desire - so much so that they are willing to break promises and vows made to the ones they had once pledged love and loyalty. The mother of their children means nothing to them? They even forget their children - like my father, for example - in pursuit of lust and desire. They discard wives like trash, or simply stack them up like old newspapers in their storerooms to gather dust.

Our society's paradigm needs to change - borrowing a quote from Sharon Pearson of The Coaching Institute, I would like to say: "The mind that created the problem can't create the solution. You must adjust your thinking".