Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies

Although any efforts to familiarize the public with an historical figure and Southeast Asia’s famed giant, especially a towering figure whose ideas transcend time and become a source of inspiration to current and future generations, are welcome and commendable, the currently screened three-series biopic on Netflix about Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah, better known as Hamka or Buya (father in Minangkabau) Hamka (1908–1981) fails to do justice to the man himself and the Indonesian public and Malay Muslim community in general.

The series taking almost nine years to produce with a budget of IDR 70 billion (nearly US$5 million),¹ making it one of the most expensive movies by Indonesia’s standard, was planned to be a trilogy but only two volumes, Buya Hamka Vol. 1 and Buya Hamka Vol. 2 were released. Hamka was played convincingly by Vino G. Bastian, an award-winning and one of Indonesia’s top actors, and Siti Raham was played by Laudya Bella, also an awardwinning actress. These two volumes were screened in the cinemas and are still available on Netflix, while the third volume about Hamka’s childhood story is yet to be released, without any specifics about its release-date. [End Page 100]

Despite the highest budget and lengthy production time, the trilogy, which is directed by Fajar Bustomi, known mainly for his success in directing the box-office Dilan trilogy, and produced by Falcon Pictures and Starvision, two of Indonesia’s biggest movie producers, Buya Hamka Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 feel shallow as they are dominated by soap operatic romance and melodramatic scenes, with Hamka appearing to turn into a sloganeer, quoting cliché after cliché without seemingly any efforts from the filmmaker to show what his achievements really are. The filmmaker also disregards the historical impact Hamka had on Indonesia and the Muslim community in Southeast Asia, as well as how deep Hamka’s influence is felt in Indonesia.

While the narrative of any biopic must be made as personal as possible so that the description of the main characters feels real and humane, the first two volumes of the Hamka trilogy stretched it too far, seemingly adapting and applying the working recipe of Indonesia’s soap operas (sinetron) on the country’s TV programs: cliché dialogue and melodrama. This series used the playbook of previous typical movies, such as Habibie and Ainun (2012). It employs its sequel and prequel, all of which seem to try to prolong and dramatize something fickle instead of applying the innovative and historical biopic of the recent Oscar winner, Oppenheimer (2023), a biopic which focuses on what matters most for the man’s life and what matters most for the world: the creation of an atomic bomb; or another highly-acclaimed film like Lincoln (2012). This movie is contextual, in-depth and heartfelt without having to be overly melodramatic to invite pity and tears from the audience, focusing on how Lincoln fights slavery. Compared to the description of the two characters in Oppenheimer and Lincoln, Hamka’s stature as portrayed in the trilogy, pales in comparison, especially since he is such a giant even by a global standard.

However, pushing a biopic about Indonesia’s larger-than-life figures to become a melodramatic production, rather than a dissemination of their ideas is not unique to the biopic on Buya Hamka. Previous biopics on Soekarno (2013), Tjokroaminoto (2015), and Kartini (2017), for instance, fell into the same trap because of the unwillingness or perhaps the inability of the filmmakers to dig deep into the ideas and thoughts of the figures and present them in the dialogues and activities of the characters. There is still a lingering belief that the cheesy, shallow melodrama is what the Indonesian public wants, a notion which was proven by the Buya Hamka biopic to be untrue, given the drop in the viewership...