100 Malaysians, 100 Milestones – LSA100 this year spotlights acclaimed actor and filmmaker Bront Palarae, whose award-winning works have spanned more than two decades. Reflecting on his prolific career, he opens up about reconnecting with his roots as he debuts in the Thai film industry with his role in The Cursed Land.
A lot of Malaysians know of Bront Palarae from his roles in the widely acclaimed films Ola Bola, Bunohan and Prebet Sapu, and producing One Two Jaga (the latter three were submitted for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards). But I vaguely remember seeing him on TV as the totally unromantic romantic lead in Sindarela alongside Sharifah Amani. The year was 2008, and in an era where Yasmin Ahmad films reigned supreme, it was expected of her character to take a feisty, tomboyish twist on the Cinderella trope. What was not expected was the natural way that Bront Palarae played both the ‘prince’ and the ‘pauper’ character. There’s a genuine, believable quality to his acting — something you often have to search for, especially in a show like that.
Funnily enough, a lot of Malaysians don’t really know of Bront Palarae outside of his work in film and TV. He only hits the headlines if it’s about an upcoming gig. He is wholly dedicated to the art, otherwise unbothered with the fame and glamour of it. Even today, at our LSA100 cover shoot, he shows up in a pair of jeans and a ‘Free Palestine’ T-shirt, hands casually stuffed in his pockets as he takes in the set. (In this political climate, it is relevant to note that Bront was among those who joined the Aqsa2Gaza Emergency Relief trip to Gaza way back in 2012.)
Sindarela was Bront’s breakthrough role as a lead on television. Back then it was easy for actors to find themselves typecast, and perhaps Bront could foresee where his acting career was heading even then, so he was determined to steer the course himself. He is first and foremost a filmmaker, which means a ‘director’s vision’ is key.
“A bit more uptight,” he quips, when I ask about his filmmaking style. “We are trying to bring objectivity to an abstract landscape. Yeah, I can be critical of myself. And I surround myself with a lot of critical people as well. It never ends, the quest for improving the craft or improving the mindset.”
Bront had more or less stumbled into filmmaking. He had already been watching a lot of things, MacGyver and Mission: Impossible, and he was “crazy about football”. After sustaining a knee injury, he was steered straight into that direction. “I had a lot of time, so, naturally you’d go out and rent videos, right?” Bront tells me. “I rented almost the whole shop. It reached a point where I was at a crossroads between a TVB series that had 20 tapes — at that time it was VHS — or obscure art house films, non-commercial and European films. I thought, ‘If I don’t like it, it’s only one tape.’ So, it was an easy choice. That was how I found Tarantino, Jean-Pierre Jeunet… all those weird names. I was like, ‘Wow, I never knew movies could give me this type of feeling.’”
Not long after his SPM exams, he had gone to Bangkok and “got into the Thai industry, weirdly, by accident”. It had been the heyday of MTV and Bront became influenced by pop culture as shown on MTV and Channel V. “I was like, ‘I want to be a music video director and make music videos,’” he says, laughing. “But then I came back and enrolled in film school, and they indoctrinated us with ‘cinema therapy’. Suddenly, it was like, ‘Forget about those music videos! It’s all about cinema.’”
Bront’s role in Terbaik Dari Langit earned him a Best Actor award at the Asean International Film Festival in 2015, and he began branching out internationally. He was cast in the first season of HBO series Halfworlds, directed by Indonesian filmmaker Joko Anwar. (Bront would later go on to collaborate with Joko Anwar on three films: Satan’s Slaves, Gundala and Satan’s Slaves 2.) And most recently, he made his debut in the Thai film industry with The Cursed Land. And reflecting on how he began, it seems fitting that his film journey would come full circle two decades later.
How would you describe the past year for you in your career as an actor and producer, and also personally? What would you say have been some of your best moments of the year?
I think it gets better and more fulfilling. I’ve done my first Thai project. Did my second Thai project, and going into my third Thai project. Got a nice Indonesian project to be in, it was also one of the best trips I’ve had in years. It has been a great journey. I’m very thankful.
You were also in Abang Adik last year. I wasn’t expecting to see you appear in it!
Oh, yeah. I was called in by the producer, and it was fun because it was only a three-day shoot. It was really fun. I miss working with Jack [Tan] after Fly by Night, so it was a natural thing to do. And I loved Jin Ong’s previous film which he produced, Shuttle Life. So I think, you know, when you’re invited by all the people that you admire, it’s only natural for you to say yes. And I’m so happy with the response and the outcome of the project.
Tell us about your experience with The Cursed Land. Since it was your first Thai film, how was preparing for that different from your other roles before?
It was such a weird thing, because I met the writer, Kong Rithdee — the co-writer. He’s also a journalist with The Bangkok Post, he has his column. And we first met during the press conference for Halfworlds, where he kind of found out that I could speak Thai, and my mom’s Thai, and all that. Then we bumped into each other a couple more times at events, and every time we bumped into each other he would always say, “Maybe you should do Thai films.” And I said, “I would love to, but I don’t think there’s any opportunity yet.” But it’s not something that I was seeking out to do. It’s like, if it happens, it happens. Then after Satan’s Slaves opened in Thailand, it gained some sort of following. I received a message from him saying, “I’m writing a Thai story and I would love for you to be in it. I’ve written a role with you in mind.”
He shared it with me, and I said, “Wow, this is much bigger than I thought it would be. I’m not sure if I can pull it off.” But he said, “I’ll be your safety net. I’ll watch your back, don’t worry.” And slowly, great people somehow came on board. Nonzee [Nimibutr] who did Nang Nak, Ananda Everingham from Shutter. They brought in the crew, the cinematographers, the art directors. I was shit scared. (laughs) I was shit scared! You know, especially with foreign productions, there’s a fear of us ‘ruining’ the film. But yeah, working with great people, they always make me look great as well. So, that’s the perks that come with working with all these people.
And this was your first time acting in Thai, right? What was that like?
It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. You know, when you ask some people who can speak Bahasa to do acting, it’s totally different, right? And it took a bit of time. I think I was lucky because we had three weeks to rehearse and do the workshops and all that, so that was sufficient for me to pick up on the nuances of the language. And my Thai was so rusty at that time. (laughs) ‘Cause I didn’t get to practise. Only when I called my mom, and things like that. But I think by the first day of shooting, we kinda felt like, “Okay, this is workable, yeah.” And it got better over time. So when it got better, you got to see improvements over each day, and it’s… not bad. Not bad. (laughs)
What was the reaction or response like, especially from your family and your peers?
That’s a small little wish of mine, especially having a Thai family. I was in Bangkok for three years right after SPM, so I’ve got my family in Thailand, my friends in Thailand. And it’s almost like they’ve been outside the fence all this while, watching my career, watching me make Malaysian movies and Indonesian movies. There’s also a kind of a small wish for them, like, “You know, it’ll be such a wonderful thing to have you doing some Thai stuff.” And when it finally happened, I think everybody was just happy that it materialised. For me, there’s nothing much happier than having something that I can share with them in their own language.
Going into the other Thai films that you’ve done, how has that kind of changed your mindset?
So when I was doing The Cursed Land, the producer was Nonzee, filmmaker legend. He was behind Nang Nak, and he was part of the renaissance of Thai films. So being the producer, he gets to observe, right? After we finished The Cursed Land, he rang me up and said, “Yeah, I have this project, and I’d love to have you — I have a role for you to play.” So I said, “I hope the dialogue is not too much. I don’t wanna deal with so much Thai dialogue.” And it turned out to be only dialogue and nothing else! (laughs) It’s an action film! I thought I could, you know, shoot some stuff, shoot some good guys or bad guys or what. But none of those! And then after that he’s doing another one, and it’s like, yeah, let’s keep the momentum going. Our working relationship has been good.
You’ve been a known actor and filmmaker in Malaysia for a really long time. Reflecting on your acting career, what’s something that you weren’t able to do, say, 20 years ago that you have mastered now?
I think maybe my understanding of territories is much better. In terms of practising, not much. Understanding, yeah. I think I understand a lot more, especially in terms of the Thai industry. Now that you’re part of it, you get to hear firsthand news, updates, developments, cases. (laughs) Red flags, bad news, good news, things like that. So, it’s the same with Indonesia as well. Yeah, I think that would be the difference. Other than that, I think the way I approach my work, the mindset is the same.
How would you describe your creative process as an actor?
Wow, I’ve never tried to, like, break it down. What I know is that I work differently for sure. Because I didn’t go to acting school, so I’m not classically trained. I went to film school, so I’m a classically trained producer or director. Acting is something I picked up along the way. What I know is, the way I approach it has always been from a filmmaker’s perspective. It’s always, like, trying to capture what the initial vision is and then you understand the framework, like, ‘These are the tropes, so do we want to follow the tropes? Do we go with the wave and be more conventional, or do we want to be a bit more ‘naughty’ about it and introduce something interesting?’ Then we start from there. It’s always from a director’s vision. And then slowly I get to work inwards.
That’s actually very interesting. You hear about a lot of actors who have only been acting their whole lives, but you’ve been involved behind the camera, too. You bring in a more technical aspect of it.
Yeah. But now I’m also trying to understand the ‘pulse’, the sort of momentum from the audience perspective. When we discuss a scene we’re shooting, for example, it’s like, ‘Now it’s 35 minutes in the story, I think the audience are in this state of mind.’ And we are at a crossroads, like, “Okay, so where do you want me to go? I can play it this way, or I can play it that way. Which one do you need me to be?” It does get more technical, and it’s more fun anyway. I think with acting ‘organically’, like, being naive about following the conventions or being naive about even the type of movie we are doing, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I just kind of find that boring. It’s a bit more fun when we get to embrace the director’s vision and try to challenge the material.
Talking about the characters you’ve played, have you ever encountered any particularly difficult characters to play?
All the time. (laughs) You know, every character is. Especially the ones you’ve done a lot. For instance, I just wrapped up on this movie where I played a cop, and that’s, like, my eighth or ninth time playing a cop. During rehearsals I was trying my best not to play it like anything I’ve played before. So obviously I never hit the mark! (laughs) It really requires certain notes. I was just trying to make it ‘flat’, you know, because you’re trying not to leave the note. Then you think, ‘Oh God!’ You just recycle Fly by Night or The Bridge and then they’re like, “Yes, exactly! This is it!” (laughs) So, it’s tough in that sense. It’s not like keeping the note is the challenge. It’s trying to reinvent something that you have done a couple of times, that’s the toughest part. I don’t want people to pay money to see a ‘recycled’ craft. I feel like I should try to change that.
What are some of the favourite roles that you’ve done, or your favourite kind of characters that you’ve played?
I’m okay with all of them, including the ‘bad’ ones. I have no regrets whatsoever, because looking back now, I think some of the ‘bad’ movies I’ve done, I picked up a lot as well, I learned a lot. So I wouldn’t look at them as something that I would try to erase from my CV or anything like that. My favourite ones? Ola Bola was fun. Terbaik Dari Langit was fun. The Bridge was fun. Anything that gets me to understand a different person in extraordinary circumstances always feels good. Because as a person I’m quite boring lah. I’m plain vanilla. I think the colours in my life are pretty much what I’ve picked up from the roles that I play. (laughs)
Because of the difference between yourself and the characters that you play, how do you kind of channel the characters while still staying true to yourself?
I think being comfortable with my flaws and fragility, and vulnerability. I’m quite comfortable with what I know and what I don’t know, and with my own doubts. And I think working with great people also, now that I’ve worked with a lot of them. (laughs) I kind of realise there’s a ‘no BS policy’ which kind of becomes a safety zone. So in most working relationships, it’s all about honesty. You know how to do it, then you do it. You don’t know how to do it, just tell your collaborators that you don’t know. That’s it, I think. I think in terms of staying true, it’s one bite at a time. People always ask me, and I would paraphrase somebody that said this: “How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time.”
How would you describe your directing or filmmaking style, getting behind the camera versus taking on the role?
A bit more uptight. (laughs) But I think it’s pretty much the same, because the circle of competence is the same. I use my acting career to scout the people I want to work with when I produce or when I direct. You have so many problems on set, like challenges, hurdles or whatsoever. And because you have so much time on set, you get to see how people operate under stress. You can kind of break it down, like, is it time-related stress, is it human-related or is it circumstances? Is it bureaucracy? So, some are okay with human skills, but their time is problematic. Some have problems with time management, but their social skills are good. They have different skills to solve the different problems. So, it’s all about that as well. We are trying to bring objectivity to an abstract landscape.
Would you say you are someone who’s very critical, like, of yourself?
Yeah. And I surround myself with a lot of critical people as well. It never ends, the quest for improving the craft or improving the mindset. I think personal growth has always been the ‘currency’ of our circle of friends as well. You just want to see everybody move up the ranks, and hopefully all of us can contribute to the local scene and make it better. Push the standard a bit higher, inspire more people a bit more, and take the industry more seriously.
What are your thoughts on the current entertainment scene in Malaysia?
I’m slightly disconnected because I haven’t done local shows, I didn’t get to do much. But I have great admiration for a lot of the bold development. You get to see a lot of projects coming up from Astro Shaw. Projek: High Council, Projek: Exit, things like that. And there’s also streaming platforms that create this nice avenue for new material to come out. We would have none of those if it were up on TV stations. Viu also plays a major role. I just hope that we can finally reach out beyond our shores a bit more. I think it will be more fun to have more Malaysians working abroad as well, and forge friendships and working relationships. Then we can harness the power of influence or marketability for local films to do well out there.
I think we’re slowly getting there.
Yeah, the young generation is crazy. (laughs) I’m so happy because now we have a lot of young, talented people with a lot of fire as well. And I think that’s what the industry needs. So it coincides nicely with all this development. I think we’re in good hands with the next generation.
Speaking of improving in the craft and everything, what has kept you motivated in doing what you do?
Now, I think, commercial success. (laughs) Weirdly. I’ve been trying to run away from that. And then somehow now, all these filmmakers have started doing commercial films, so yeah, commercial success. We are not measuring our success just merely by the box office success in our own country. We’re talking about how many countries we get to release our films in, and things like that. We’re bringing objectivity to the whole ‘how do we measure success’ question as well. And I think we have been more ambitious in that sense. Your craft is just one of those components. So it’s not only like, ‘Ah, am I good in this movie?’ And if it feels good, ‘Alright, that’s it. Life is all good.’ No, now it’s like, ‘How would it work in the old market? Do we have other markets? Did the movie travel? How’s the response from the global audience?’ And of course, validation from family. But that has been, like, forever anyway. Except that now my daughter is also part of the creative committee, together with my wife. So, that committee is tough to please. (laughs)
Looking back on your journey in getting where you are now, what would you tell your younger self?
Wow. Don’t change anything. (laughs) You may have doubts about the things you believe in, but stick to it, InshaAllah. All good.
