I love this movie.

And not just because, (like audience members quoted in The Borneo Post), I came out after seeing it with ‘a warm and fuzzy feeling…crying…smiling widely…high spirited and feeling patriotic’*.

I love it not just because it’s fast paced, funny, compelling (that bit at the end! hold-the-breath- edge-of-the-seat stuff!), the cinematography is terrific, it has wonderful vignettes of life in different Malaysian communities. And it’s well acted, by players who were cast for their footballing skills, then taught to act. The producer thought that was easier than teaching actors to play football…

I love it because it taught me some stuff about Malaysia.

The film, a huge success at the box office, came out on January 28th. In English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil (with subtitles, phew), it’s based on the true story of the Malaysian football team who defeated Korea in a historic match in Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka Stadium to qualify for the Moscow Olympics. Historically it’s not entirely accurate. In an interview Hassan and Wong, two members of the 1980 team, interviewed in The Star, pointed out that some facts had been changed (including the final score!). However they did like the storyline, and said it was ‘similar to what we had gone through’.

So, the movie is about football. But, as the late great Bill Shankly said ‘Some people think football is a matter of life and death…. I can assure them it is much more serious than that’. And so Ola Bola is about more than a football match. It’s  (Borneo Post again) ‘a remarkable story of true Malaysian spirit and sacrifice for the nation’s glory’. In a series of TV ads Malaysians comment on how the film made them proud to be part of multicultural nation, how important teamwork and striving are, how every one has a part to play, however small. A football enthusiast quoted  leaving the cinema said he felt more grateful to be Malaysian after seeing the movie ‘I felt so proud to see people of different races sitting on  my right and left in the cinema, the diverse audience shows we are still one’ (Borneo Post).

Digging a bit deeper into the reviews, however, there’s another message too. Hassan  commented that ‘nowadays the national squad doesn’t boast players from all communities’ and says that the ‘togetherness and teamwork of that team should be revived’. The success of the team, according to Wong, was due to the spirit of the players, none of whom were professionals. ‘All of us played for the country’. Even the current Prime Minister’s younger brother, who was present at the original match, said of the film that ‘it was a powerful reminder of a better Malaysia back then’.

Interesting, eh? something to ponder as we get to know more about a country that we sometimes forget is a relatively new nation.

In the meantime, if Ola Bola comes to a cinema near you – go to see it! And like this young man at the cinema before the show, maybe even join in the spirit of the show.

Go go go go gooooaaaal!

*yes, all of the above. And yes, before you query the ‘patriotic’ bit, I know I’m not Malaysian. Put it down to the power of the Big Screen.