a malaysian abroad

Continuing the series of Malaysia in the Movies, today a malaysian abroad presents The Sleeping Dictionary.

I only stumbled upon the existence of this movie a few months ago while surfing around the gazillion cable channels with nothing to watch, and “Sarawak” in the description caught my eye. I flipped to it, saw Jessica Alba saying something that was supposed to be Malay / Iban, didn’t understand a word, and decided to not bother. Since starting this Malaysia in the Movies series, however, I decided to get hold of The Sleeping Dictionary and see it all the way through, no matter how painful, in order to properly review it for you, dear readers.

Surprisingly, it was a pretty good movie.

Okay, let’s qualify that: the scenery and setting was excellent, really showing how lush and green a tropical jungle really is. The movie also used over 600 native Iban, and what you see in terms of “native” settings is authentic - the movie was shot on location in Sarawak.  You get more than a glimpse into the different types of British people who came over to Sarawak in the 1930s (Sarawak has been part of Malaysia since 1963) — those who hated everything about it, those who tolerated it, and whose who fell in love … and it seems that the whole sleeping dictionary concept really did exist.

So what’s a sleeping dictionary, you ask?  Let’s just say that the Iban, one of the many native tribes in the state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, made it easy(-ier) for in this case British colonials to learn a new language and habits/customs of a totally foreign people by providing a maiden to live and sleep with them in order to teach them said language and habits and customs.

The plot itself was rather straightforward, even if it didn’t make me sympathetic to John Truscott (Hugh Dancy), the naive British lad who falls in love with his sleeping dictionary (Selima, played by Jessica Alba) and ends up messing up the lives of so many people because he couldn’t face the reality, the consequences of the forbidden love.  There were quite a few disconnects and abrupt jumps in the story that detracted and distracted from an othewise relatively decent tale.

source

I had to laugh out loud at the first major language lesson, though: He writes on her hand and says hand, which Selima translates as jari which actually means fingers. What she says is arm I didn’t understand - perhaps the Iban word is different than the Malay? But when Truscott zooms in on her chestal appendages and mumbles breast, Selima gasps and utters susu … which translates to milk!! I totally howled with laughter there. Again, I have to qualify - perhaps in Iban that is what is used for breast? I don’t know.

Bottom line: I actually highly recommend this movie. Don’t expect to be blown away by the plot, but it is interesting enough, and the scenery beautiful enough, to keep you engaged almost throughout.  Go check it out, and get a glimpse of the tropical paradise that is Sarawak, Malaysia.

Next, I hope to feature a movie starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones.  Can you guess that it is, and how it relates to Malaysia?  Tune in next week to find out!

UPDATE: you can find an irate reaction to The Sleeping Dictionary here.

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