NARATIVE TRANSFORMATION PROCESS FROM NOVEL TO FILM IN TOMBIRUO: PENUNGGU RIMBA (2017)

Tombiruo: Penunggu Rimba (2017) is a Malay film adapted from a popular novel with the same title, written by Ramlee Awang Murshid in 1998. This film gained Ringgit Malaysia four million within eights days of screening and in total made ticket sales of eight million Ringgit Malaysia. Although this film garnered the ‘box office’ title, there are claims that it failed to portray the exact narrative that of the novel which it was adapted from. Thus, this article intends to answer, the narrative transformation and modification process Tombiruo: Penunggu Rimba film has gone through from the novel. Through a fundamental research and qualitative research design, answer to the research question was gained. The main research instrument was content analysis of both the novel and filem. Through library research, materials such as journal articles, books, chapter in books, desertations and magazines were studied. This article applied the transformation and modification process in the Intertextuatily Theory by Julia Kristeva as its analysis tool. The findings are that the director has transferred most aspects of the novel to the film’s narrative. Yet, some significant changes were made to the plot and character because film is an audio-visual medium. Film has different characteristics compared to a novel. Thus, it would be impposible to totally portray the narrative of a novel into film. The narrative of a novel has to undergo the transformation process in order to be presented as a film narrative.