The Big Durian is an attempt to reconstruct a thorny historical event in contemporary Malaysia, known as “the amok of Private Adam.” In 1987, a Malay soldier called Adam ran amok with an M16 in Chow Kit, a Chinese district of Kuala Lumpur. It could have been a minor incident but because of rising ethnic tension at the time it triggered rumors of racial riots and a nation-wide panic . A few days later, a massive government crackdown detained more than 100 opposition leaders and civil society activists. The event became another forbidden topic similar to the national trauma of the ‘May 13’ racial riot in 1969. But Director Amir Muhammad’s task is not simply to recreate the event in the past. Rather he emphasizes the continuity of the past in the present by consciously eschewing archival footage and instead collecting the personal memories of people from various ethnic backgrounds. By doing so, the film reveals the ‘logic’ of the case: the politically weak Mahathir government seized an opportunity to crack down against the opposition and to consolidate power once again. More critically, the logic in which “rumor is the same as memory is the same as history” continues to affect Malaysian society. The film makes a desperate plea to face the truth by cracking open the cartel of silence and amnesia. In that sense The Big Durian is an anguished ‘petition’ towards the Malaysian people. (PARK Sohyun)