2012 MUBI World Cup Voting, Match #7: Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) vs. Malaysia (Village People Radio Show)

This topic is part of the 2012 MUBI World Cup. If you have not already done so, please read the first post at the topic for an introduction to and rules about this year’s World Cup:

http://mubi.com/topics/2012-mubi-world-cup-introduction-submit-your-list-of-films

The Way You Wanted Me (1944) Finland Original title: Sellaisena kuin sinä minut halusit Directed by: Teuvo Tulio Approximate runtime: 102 min Submitted by: Angel

vs.

Village People Radio Show (2007) Malaysia Original title: Apa Khabar Orang Kampung Directed by: Amir Muhammad Approximate runtime: 72 min Submitted by: twodead​magpies, Yuki Aditya

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The purpose of this topic is to cast votes in the matchup listed above and also to be a forum for discussing the films in the match.

Anyone who has seen both of the films listed above may vote in this match. You must vote for whichever of the two films you personally like better. In order to vote you must post a reply to this topic containing one of the following sequences:

If you are voting for The Way You Wanted Me: “Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 1 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 0”
If you are voting for Village People Radio Show: “Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 0 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 1”

Your vote must contain the names of both films with a “one” after the film you are voting for and a “zero” after the other film. If your vote is not formatted in this way it will not be counted.

Along with your vote you are strongly encouraged to leave additional comments regarding your reactions to the films, your reasons for why you voted the way you did, and responses to other participants’ comments. Being able to have deep discussion about the films and different aspects of them is an important part of finding enjoyment in participating in the World Cup.

This match will end on Monday, March 19 at 10:00 PM GMT. No votes attempted to be cast after that time will be counted. Shortly after the match ends the votes will be tallied and a winner of the match will be declared. If the films both receive the same number of votes, the match will be considered a tie.

The percentage of votes each film receives in a match will have an effect on whether or not the corresponding country will participate in the final round of the World Cup. Thus even if the film you vote for loses in this match, your vote will still be important.

The results of the matches as well as the schedule for future matches can be found here:

http://mubi.com/lists/2012-mubi-world-cup

If you would like to participate but are unable to find sources to watch these films, please send me a personal message so that I can invite you to the private website featuring internet links to view the films.

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 1 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 0

i raved enough about both of these films in the voting secrets thread. and since i don’t have any harri & the mulefukkers to hand, i’ll recognise that i’m voting against my own submission with an appropriate song from the New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal. kiitos angel.

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 0 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 1

Loved, loved, LOVED Muhammad’s film—the old guy sitting around talking about how he fell in and out of various political/military imbroglios very much as his country did, along with the beautiful cinematography that places you right there. I was most struck with the sense of humor the film has, a strong feeling that these people are survivors not just in life but in spirit, an inner strength that I admire greatly. Great film.

And I didn’t like the Tulio film. I get that it’s historically important and it was shot well but it’s just not my thing. I’m very picky about my melodramas (my favorite probably being Melo ) and I just couldn’t stomach all the plot contrivances of this one.

the tulio was ridiculously over the top, it’s true. it’s the melodrama to end all melodrama. radio show was very interesting, i liked how he used the flashes of light, like a visual static when tuning a radio. great cinematography. but i have to vote for tulio and the equally marvelously named marie-louise fock

finland (the way you wanted me) 1 – malaysia (village people radio show) 0

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 1 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 0

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 1 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 0

Two films that I rated equally and it was simply a matter of choosing the one that was more memorable than the other.

The Way You Wanted Me : This film belongs to a genre that I generally dislike but having said that, this film does have an odd quality that is tough to explain. It is melodrama for sure but it has a kind of classic and timeless feel to it that makes it quite memorable. It is a kind of film that grows on you and I can appreciate it much more now than immediately after I watched it. The image of the hat hanging on the fence will remain with me for a long time.

Village People Radio Show : This film is not bad either though I seem to remember it for all the wrong reasons. The annoying white noise effect, the frustration of not understanding the setting of the film and eventually a disinterest in the plight of those narrators. The color photography is lovely and I also liked the folk story on the radio. I was also enjoying the stories of the comrades until I sort of disconnected due to various reasons.

4-1 finland

Watched one of these and was very dissapointed by it. I was very excited to see it too. :-(

Village People Radio Show Nothing felt like the whole truth here and the discordant streaking/blurring interludes (felt like I was being thrown back into Pipilotti terrain there for a while) whether intended or not it worked well for me as a device to announce “forgotten/disowned/denied bits here…fill them in as you will”.

This was a thoughtfully constructed and filmed documentary (I noted the difference in feel of “I’m interested” indicated by the film maker asking questions in contrast to PH). It was pretty cheeky I thought, these aged exiles felt to me lulled by the laid back humorous matter of fact nature of Amir’s approach to talk about brutal desperate times with good natured almost jolly focus more often on innocuous incidental things than the guts of it with many “elephants in room” being deftly side tracked…it’s the sort of thing in a different environment might cause a modern day soldier, politician or CEO to walk into and come out to find themselves at the centre of an uproar at how they’d downplayed their roles etc. shaking their head and thinking “what just happened?!”.

I liked all the scenes of village life, the plump duck that at one stage waddled past behind the subs, the military style procession of ants, the poor tethered monkey, the cockfight all nicely placed representations of aspects of the narrative. I liked the lingering of the camera on buildings taking its time, taking in form and symmetry, and the the prayer scene, the filming through windows, doorways, through the rain, the flags, the leaves, the bright umbrellas. The use of a soap opera added flavour and texture weaving through & flagging themes of betrayal, suspicion, murder, imperialism, exile.

The Way You Wanted Me I thought this was a great film with a brilliant performance from the leading lady but they’re such familiar themes to me, was reminded of The Mother and the Whore, Brides of Christ, Somerset’s Maugham’s Rain, Breaking the Waves, Anna Karenina, Sophie in Razor’s Edge,.the Picture of Dorian Gray, Madam Bovary etc….her mother reminded me of a nun at my boarding school Mother Leonard stalking the aisles telling us to avoid evil and not “let boys maul your bodies” boy did that crack us up!

His fixation on males as destroyers and female as hapless victim became quite tiresome .… I wonder what he intended to convey at the end? Was it a proud shrugging off of the shackles of shame, a triumphant I am woman hear me roar moment…or had she in Tulio’s secret soul gone down the rabbit hole of dissolution from which there would be no return, providing a projection vehicle for some deep seated contempt for women. Don’t know and guess I never will.

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 0 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 1

glad to see some love for village people! just becaue i voted against it doesn’t mean i don’t love it, but i’m shallow and the novelty of the new discovery won out.

but they’re such familiar themes to me

recently i was lectured about how this is apparently one of genre’s strongest points. the familiar themes become a platform for subtler inflections, since we all know where it’s going anyway – and with tulio we can sit back and drink and drown in what makes it finnish (i’m generously refraining from posting enthusiastic finnish song about the joys of wodka) s’why it’s a perfect world cup film – we get to see how tulio processed all the influences he was subject to at the time and came up with something unique…

i loved the ending, where she actually walks off through the horse shit. fuck you, metaphor!

just had another look at that, I had that scene were she’s throwing off her clothes laughing and gay being cheered by all the men in my mind as being much closer to the end when I wrote that, as I’d wondered what Tulio felt about that – as in, did he mean to convey liberation or the final closing of the jaws of evil by that scene – it’s a few weeks since I saw this. The ending was actually bloody sad.

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 0 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 1

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 0 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 1

a strong comeback for village people! tied at 4 all!

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me (1944)) – (1) vs. Malaysia (Village People Radio Show (2007)) – (0)

I liked neither film, but I have to vote for Finland because, for my issues with its abrupt nature with the twists in the story, the moments when the director allows the visuals by themselves to drive the narrative (especially the sequences where the protagonist is desperately searching for work to fed herself and her child) were gems within a whole I wasn’t fond of.

this was a really tough call for me because i liked both of these films just about equally—they were good, not great—but i think i preferred Village People just a tad more. It had that indescribable something for me. All in all though, The Way You Wanted Me was a nice film but the plot tended to shift a lot.

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 0 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 1

I probably will not have time to watch “Village People Radio Show” before the deadline, but I see magpies is doing a good job defending Tulio!

Remember there is an introduction here

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 1 — Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 0

A few thoughts on the two films:

I’m generally very interested in the many ways that questions of history, politics, exile, memory and narrative are tackled by film-makers, and Muhammad’s consistently inventive, formally playful and humorous approach meant I took to Village People Radio Show in a big way. I also then decided to check out one of his earlier films, The Big Durian, and while it is a lot rougher around the edges, and not quite as formally accomplished as Village People, it is even more cutting in its social commentary, while still retaining a very delightfully irreverent edge throughout. Needless to say, I’m very eager to see his other films.

The contentious use of radio noise in the film was fascinating to me, not only as part of a distancing idiom but also a way of suggesting trauma, ruptures in memory, moments which the film’s many protagonists do not want to, or perhaps cannot, remember. There is certainly more than one way to read this (this article presents a particularly wonderful analysis), but it is interesting to me that this is vaguely similar to a tactic often employed by many melodramas, that of using predominantly non-representational elements (sound, music etc.) to suggest emotions and states of mind that might be hard to convey through purely representational means.

But while those elements perhaps stick out in a film like Village People (not to the film’s detriment, in my view) they are ubiquitous in Tulio’s The Way You Wanted Me, which is melodrama in its rawest form, every cliche taken to its logical extreme, and beyond. It achieves a quite disorienting mix of pathos and comedy (even if I was laughing through most of it), and I don’t know if I’ll eventually remember it as anything more than a curio (so the vote was a fairly easy decision for me), but I still really enjoyed the film, particularly the droll dialogue.

5-6 malaysia

gah, don’t know if i’ll have time to watch the next two

It’s 6-5 Finland, isn’t it?

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 1 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 0

Finland 1 – Malaysia 0

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 1 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 0

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 0 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 1

@ vikram: yes, sorry! i am fired as official scorekeeper

and for my last update, it’s now 9-6 finland

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 1 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 0

Finland (The way you wanted me) 0 – Malaysia (Village people radio show) 1

I don’t care much who wins because selfishly I’ve been able to watch both of these amazing gems. Hate to be overly positive tonight, but this Cup is a great program and those persons who found the films and made copies available to stream in flash (or download) deserve many props. I’ve looked for some of these titles for years, and others I’ve never even heard mentioned, intensifying surprises I’ll not soon forget.

Finland (The Way You Wanted Me) 1 – Malaysia (Village People Radio Show) 0