Following the major success of
The Journey, which two years ago became the biggest commercial hit for a Malaysian film in the country, the director Chiu decided to set himself an even bigger challenge, a twofold one: to bring Malaysians to the cinema to watch a nationally produced film about Malaysian football!
It would seem that, due to the national team’s lack of success on the pitch, Malaysians – who are however, great fans of the English Premier League, the Spanish Liga and the Italian Serie A – are lukewarm in their enthusiasm for their own local “tigers”. Chiu takes the local public, via a long flashback, back to fateful 1980.
After being eliminated in the final match of the qualifiers in 1976, the Malaysian squad again have to battle to get a place at the Moscow Olympics. Just getting a place amongst the qualifying teams was an enormous triumph for the team, and this exploit meant a great deal to the entire nation.
The main character that Chiu’s film revolves around is the tormented captain, Chow Kwok Keong, known as Tauke.
During the critical match against Korea in 1976, he was sent off, causing the penalty kick that decreed defeat and, therefore, no qualification. To remain near his poor family of labourers on a rubber plantation, Tauke turned down a transfer offer in England.
His life rings with heroism: he gets up early in the morning to work on the plantation, works in an office during the day and finds time in the evening to train.
Around Tauke, Chiu introduces a trio of key characters, strategically identified in the racial components of the country: the Malay forward, Ali; the Indian goalie, Muthu; and the first reserve goalie who went on to be a forward, Eric.
The latter also provides the narrative voice in a framework that is a genuine mirror of Chiu’s intents. We jump forward to the present day, and Marianne, a TV producer set on leaving the country thanks to a job offer in London, has been given the unwanted task of making a programme to celebrate that period.
And so she heads to eastern Malaysia, towards the Sabah forest, to meet Eric, who had returned to the carpentry trade of his family, and who trains the local team of undisciplined kids.
Marianne’s visit, the interview which ensues (in Mandarin, which urbanite Marianne struggles to speak) and the “conversion” the encounter makes surface, transport Chiu’s key message into the present: “Achieving your dreams has more value if done in your home country”.
Which is just what Chiu manages to do in style: a Chinese man from Malaysia who has realized a dream of bringing a public of diverse Malaysian ethnicities to see a film which encourages a spirit of national unity, beyond ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity.
Of course, in Ola Bola, nationalist pride sometimes takes the upper hand, like in the aerial shots highlighting the natural beauty of the country or in the waving of the nation’s flag from the train in the finale. But these are easily forgivable slip-ups in a film that once again puts other local productions in the shade in terms of ambition and quality of the narrative and the mise-en-scene of situations and characters.
For example, the inclusion of certain comic elements, such as the trio of Muthu’s sidekicks and the semi-serious sports commentator Rahman (the ever-impeccable Bront Palarae, who the Udine public will remember from Bunohan), who wants to inflict on Malaysia the excitable ways of South American sports commentators, with his “Goal! Goal! Goal!” And as is the norm for Chiu’s films, it is well worth staying in your seats until the final credits, where some vintage selfies are portrayed!