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A lame delivery of a single-father story

Abrupt stop:  Budding go-kart racer Mada (Naufal Azhar) suffers from brain cancer, which is discovered after he suffers from a severe headache during a race

Hans David Tampubolon (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sat, November 7, 2015

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A lame delivery of a single-father story

Abrupt stop:  Budding go-kart racer Mada (Naufal Azhar) suffers from brain cancer, which is discovered after he suffers from a severe headache during a race.

A potentially strong story of a single father fighting for the life of his son, Ayah Menyayangi Tanpa Akhir (Father Loves Endlessly) ends up being another tedious tear-jerker.

Patriarchy can sometimes hurt men even more than women. Because of patriarchy, society perceives men as the bread winner of the household and men are thought to be inferior compared to women when it comes to raising children.

That is why in patriarchal societies, such as Indonesia, there have been hardly any significant tributes paid toward the parental dedication of men.

We have our national Mother'€™s Day, but not a single date out of 365 days in our yearly calendar is allocated to the fathers.

Hanny R. Saputra'€™s latest film, Ayah Menyayangi Tanpa Akhir (Father Loves Endlessly), tries to offer a fresh perspective about men and fatherhood. It tries to convey the message that men can also nurture their children with love and tenderness as well as women can.

The film is adapted from a novel of the same title written by Kirana Kejora. It tells the story of Arjuna (Fedi Nuril), a pharmacist born into an aristocratic Javanese family, who chooses to go against his family'€™s wishes by leaving his blue blood legacy behind to marry a Japanese girl, Keisha (Kelly Tandiono).

Arjuna loses Keisha when she dies giving birth to their son, Mada (Naufal Azhar). Arjuna, now without a wife, raises Mada all by himself.

For 15 years, Arjuna makes Mada the center of his universe. He gives his son the best education possible, opens his own drug store so that they can move together from their old small house to a bigger and more comfortable one on the outskirts of town and he allows Mada to channel his teenage energy in weekend go-kart races.

Things go well for the father-and-son duo until one day, during one of the go-kart sessions, Mada crashes after feeling a tremendous pain in his head. After an examination, it turns out that Mada has brain cancer and Arjuna'€™s life is once again turned upside down.

The idea of promoting fatherhood through a story about a working single father who must also take on the role of a mother at home to take care his only dying son might sound interesting, and there are many aspects and angles that could have been explored here, but the film itself ends up as a tedious tear-jerker.

The film spends way too much of its time trying to lure tears from the audience with excessively maudlin scenes and dialogue. This is a complete deviation from the book, which actually tells the story of the endless tribulations of a single father from a much more lighthearted angle.

For example, in the book there is a story of how Arjuna deals with an awkward situation in which he must attend a Mother'€™s Day celebration at Mada'€™s school. He is the only male among the females during the celebration and his awkwardness in dealing with the situation is one of the most interesting stories told in the book.

However, this particularly strong and memorable story from the book is somehow ignored by Hanny. The film focuses mostly on Mada'€™s pain and for this reason, the message of Arjuna'€™s struggle as a single father is somehow left out and forgotten.

There is an interesting angle that Hanny tries to work in during the final part of the film. Here, he tries to bring up the story of forgiveness and reconciliation by bringing Arjuna'€™s aristocratic family into the scene. However, this angle is brought up way too late into the movie and it hardly provides any significant spark.

The music score from Krisna Purna also exhibits the overly dramatic and tragic nature of the film.

Acting-wise, the main actors '€” Fedi and Naufal '€” try their best to bring their A-game to the screen and build a solid chemistry as father and son.

Unfortunately, for some reason, their performance is just not believable enough. From a non-technical point of view, the make-up department should have done a better job in making Fedi look older as a 40-something father.

Fedi, in real life, looks much younger than his real age. At 32, Fedi still has the look of a mid-20s man and this is apparent in the movie. Eventually, what the audience notices is that Arjuna and Mada look more like brothers instead of father and son.

In terms of acting, Fedi and Naufal also offer nothing believable or convincing enough in their performance. Like the overall feeling of the movie, each line they speak or each expression they perform is filled with exaggeration designed to trigger sadness.

If there is one actor or actress that delivers a believable performance in the film, it is Kelly, who performs convincingly as a Japanese woman with her well-developed accent.

Unfortunately, she spends mere minutes being alive and most of her time in the movie is spent in the form of memento photographs in Mada'€™s living room.

Overall, with its endless flow of tragedy and tears, the film is really just a glorified version of a regular sinetron (Indonesian soap opera).

'€” Photo courtesy of MD Pictures

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