The Last Communist

Director Amir Muhammad opted for the unconventional in making this documentary about Chin Peng, a man who played an active role in the Malaysian Communist Party when he was young and led the resistance against the Japanese and British later in life. It so happens that Chin Peng himself is not even in the film. While he is spending his last years in exile, Muhammad is traversing Malaysia in search of the places where the Communist leader used to live or be in hiding. Short texts inform us about his feats, but the real question is whether the memory of him is still alive. Initially, the people Muhammad interviews prefer to discuss their own activities. Still, the bright pink lotus cakes at the market appear to tell a story about a resistance hero, and someone leads us into an underground tunnel to show us the graffiti that the guerrillas used to kill time painting. As a surprising bonus, Muhammad, who also makes fiction and experimental work, inserts snazzy fragments from musicals now and then, an ironic homage to the British propaganda films from those days. Gradually, past and present approach one another in a cross section of Malaysia. But tongues are wagging in neighbouring Thailand, where a large number of banished communists still live.