Butterfly

In case you don't understand Malay, it is literal translation of Butter-fly. I guess the title was intentionally named such a fashion to sound irony on some of the messages that movie director or producer conveyed.

It was a story about how a curious female high schooler who was searching for the meaning of life by pondering on death. This was due to the fact that her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Luckily, she had a closed relationship with her parents and the family is open towards discussion about different belief systems. In fact, they actually talked about Bible, Hinduist scriptures during their dinner time. Her father even encouraged her to explore different worldviews or belief system, as a person who gone through the journey before and part of development.

I guess this is the part where it gets a lot of uproar, media attention and political tension. It was taken from its only platform, an online streaming platform.

Disclaimer: I am a Protestant Christian, so I can't really comment on those points about Islam in the movie. In fact, there were some confusion about Catholics and Protestant in the movie but I guess those were not the main messages that the production team wanted to focus on. Nevertheless, I am continuing this post from a humanistic perspective.

First of all, I remember that in Malaysian Constitution, there is a clause that says,

11. (1) Every person has the right to profess and practise his religion and, subject to Clause (4), to propagate it (Clause (4) State law and in respect of the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya, federal law may control or restrict the propagation of any religious doctrine or belief among persons professing the religion of Islam).

.... and....

12. (3) No person shall be required to receive instruction in or to take part in any ceremony or act of worship of a religion other than his own.

As such, I don't think the main message of the movie, which is every person has his/her own right to decide his/her religion/belief system (as long as s/he is an adult), is pointing towards Islam apostasy. Again, I cannot comment much since I am not a muslim (I don't wanna get jailed...).

Towards the end of the movie, there was a dialogue by the father that says,

"Hey honey, go on and explore your religion as what I did during my younger days. You need to decide this on your own. I believe in Islam because that is my choice, so did your mum."

Ah, that sentences made me cried...

Anyway, putting this aside, this movie contained a lot of Malaysian elements, such as the myriad of languages used by Malaysian in day to day life, discussion on different religions...

I particularly like the part where each time protagonist interacted with her neighbour who was a hardcore fundamentalist, she and her family tended to finish their conversation as soon as possible because of his attitudes towards non-Muslim.

Indeed, the director made it clear: Narrow minded religion fundamentalist has no place in this lovely country where people are working towards unity!

The movie is still available at Bibili and in order to protect the movie, I guess it is better for you to Google it if you want to watch this lovely movie.

Let me know what's your thought after watching it?