Merantau

Merantau is a 2009 Indonesian action film and the first feature film by the British director Gareth Evans. It had its world premiere in July 2009 at the festival in Bucheon and opened in Indonesian cinemas in August of the same year. The title refers to a traditional rite of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra: a young man leaves his home village to gain experience abroad and later returns to enrich the community with it. The main character is Yuda, a young Minangkabau silat master who, following this tradition, sets out for Jakarta to teach silat. Right after arriving he loses both his lodging and his wallet and gets entangled with a brother and sister who are fleeing a violent employer. The fights in the film are built on silek harimau, the tiger style of Minangkabau silat. According to the Jakarta Post, the fighter in it attacks with an open palm instead of a fist and stays low to the ground; the paper also described the style as nearly extinct. Yuda is played by Iko Uwais, and in the role of Eric appears Yayan Ruhian, a pencak silat trainer and referee. It was the first film role for both. At the ActionFest festival, Merantau won the jury prize for best film in 2010. The film began the collaboration between Evans and Uwais: Uwais, Ruhian, Donny Alamsyah and Alex Abbad later appeared in Evans's films The Raid (2011) and The Raid 2 (2014).

Martial arts in this work

Origin

Evans came to pencak silat through a documentary. According to the Jakarta Post, he was drawn to the martial art by a silat demonstration in London in 2004; he made the documentary Land of the Moving Shadows: Pencak Silat in 2007 in collaboration with Christine Hakim. While shooting the documentary in Indonesia he met Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, whom he then cast in his first feature film. Merantau was produced by the company PT. Merantau Films. After the film was finished, Uwais signed a five-year contract with Evans and his company and stopped working as a driver.

Fight choreography

According to the Jakarta Post, the fight choreography was led by Edwel Yusri Datuk Rajo Gampo Alam, a master of silek harimau from Agam in West Sumatra, who inherited the style from his grandfather and taught it to about twenty foreign students. Before the shoot, Iko Uwais had spent nine years practising pencak silat Betawi, and in 2005 he won the national silat gathering (jamboree) in Jakarta; he also trained at a school founded by his grandfather, the silat master H. Achmad Bunawar. He studied silek harimau for about six months for the film. Yayan Ruhian, who has practised pencak silat since the age of thirteen, also took part in the choreography when Evans invited him to collaborate in 2008; we have not been able to document the extent of his share.

People and martial arts

• Gareth EvansDirector
• Edwel Yusri Datuk Rajo Gampo AlamFight choreographer· Pencak Silat Harimau Minangkabau (real practitioner)
• Yayan RuhianFight choreographer· Pencak Silat (real practitioner)
• Iko UwaisActor — as Yuda· Pencak Silat Harimau Minangkabau (portrays the art on screen)
• Yayan RuhianActor — as Eric· Pencak Silat (real practitioner)

Awards

• Won · ActionFest, Jury Award for Best Film (2010)