Ten years ago at this time I was living in Chiang Mai, Thailand, teaching English at a local high school. It seems like such a long time ago, but the impact of spending a year and a half living and working in a foreign country did so much to change my perspectives on the world, and my place in it, that I still feel very close to the experience. I'm sometimes wistful that I've lost touch with all of my former students and fellow teachers, and indeed most of the friends I made while living abroad, but returning to my native city where I've resided ever since, has not made me feel as if I've completely lost touch with Thailand. I cherish my mostly-fond memories of the country, and still try to keep up with major current events there, as depressing as they often may be (as they have been lately).
Cinema has been a major component of my feeling of connectedness. While in Chiang Mai I first tried my hand at criticism, penning a monthly video review column for a local English-language news magazine catering to the British/Australian/North American ex-patriot community. At the time, I wrote mostly about the latest Hollywood films, because they were the ones widely available in rental shops. It was easy to experience the cultural artifacts of my own culture while abroad. Now I'm lucky to live in a place where I can more than just vicariously experience some of the benefits of Thai cinema's resurgence and global emergence over the past decade or so. Between all of the film festivals and alternative screening venues that exist here on Frisco Bay, there are usually a few opportunities a year, and sometimes as many as a half-dozen or more, to view Thai films in 35mm prints on the big screen; of these I've missed only a scant few over the past decade. I've been able to keep relatively current with the work of directors I was first exposed to during my time in the Land of Smiles- Wisit Sasanatieng, Nonzee Nimibutr and Pen-ek Ratanaruang (the latter's latest Nymph was not among the best films I saw at the latest San Francisco International Film Festival, but I was extremely pleased for the opportunity to view it, and particularly its nearly-supernatural opening camera move, in a cinema in my own town.) I've been able to discover from afar the work of newer talent like Uruphong Raksasad, who makes his digital quasi-documentaries in the region of Thailand I'm most personally familiar with, or Anocha Suwichakornpong, whose Mundane History was my most truly transcendent highlight of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival earlier this year.
The constant Thai cinematic presence over these years as a Frisco guy who left some small piece of his heart in Thailand, however, has been Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who ten years ago was seeing his first feature film, Mysterious Object At Noon, travel the global festival circuit. I first heard his name in 2001, shortly before the film played to a small audience at the Pacific Film Archive. Since then, thanks to the SFIFF, SFIAAFF, and other local venues tapped into international cinephile dialogue, I've been able to watch most of his film and video work, much of it repeatedly. How much of a debt do I owe my affection for and fascination with Apichatpong's filmmaking to my stint in Thailand? I can't be sure, but it's been heartening to feel like I've been following this still-young director over the past decade as his visibility has increased among film-lovers everywhere. I was so thrilled and surprised on Sunday, when his latest feature Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the first such win for an Asian film since films by Shohei Imamura and Abbas Kiarostami shared the honor in 1997. Of course I have not yet seen Uncle Boonmee (although I was delighted to see his companion short video piece Letter to Uncle Boonmee at the SFIAAFF in March) and perhaps I'll even find it a letdown compared to his three masterful 35mm features, Syndromes and a Century, Tropical Malady, and Blissfully Yours. But I feel glad that this high-profile win will surely secure a chance for Frisco Bay Apichatpong fans to see the film eventually, and hopefully sooner than such an opportunity would otherwise be likely to occur.
In the meantime, I'm all the more excited to plunge into the viewing opportunities that have been laid upon my table. One certainly doesn't need to be an Apichatpong Weerasethakul admirer to be excited by chances to see Andy Warhol films, but it supplies another reason; Apichatpong has often named Warhol, along with Frisco Bay experimental film legend Bruce Baillie, as favorite filmmakers and key inspirations for his work. SFMOMA will screen confirmed Apichatpong favorite The Chelsea Girls on July 8. And the longest-running lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender film festival in the world, Frameline, has announced as part of its upcoming program next month a large-scale focus on Andy Warhol. It consists of screenings of a new documentary, Beautiful Darling, the Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar, a clips lecture by Ron Gregg, and two programs of shorter Warhol films selected by Gregg, including Vinyl, which adapted Anthony Burgess's a Clockwork Orange with Gerard Malanga six years before Stanley Kubrick did it with Malcolm McDowell.
In addition to the Warhol films, Frameline selections I'm anxious to see include I Killed My Mother by Xavier Dolan and Spring Fever by Lou Ye, both of which come highly regarded by those who have seen them at festivals over the past year, and Géza von Radvány's 1958 version of Madchen In Uniform, screening as an archival selection. Frameline veterans from Cheryl Dunye to François Ozon to Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman each will have new films presented at this year's festival, but the full range of filmmaking, from documentary to short form to a robust selection of South America's New Queer Cinema cannot be adequately summarized in a paragraph of preview, so I urge you to browse the full schedule before finalizing your festival plans. I know I will.
June's going to be a crowded month of filmgoing however, even with Sex In The City 2 virtually* dominating the Castro Theatre from now until Frameline opens there June 17. After a near-month of hiatus, the Pacific Film Archive reopens this weekend. The venue's regular projection space (at least until 2014 or so) at 2575 Bancroft Way has its first screenings of the summer tomorrow evening, when a double feature of Whistler films you may or may not have seen at the Roxie's I Still Wake Up Dreaming B-noir festival, play. As does the 1975 King Hu martial arts extravaganza The Valiant Ones. The latter kicks off a remarkable series of recent acquisitions to the PFA film collection, which reminds us that Berkeley's most-revered film exhibition venue has roots much deeper than mere exhibition. (So that's what the 'A' stood for!) Films by Hayao Miyazaki, Agnès Varda, Alberto Gout, Robert Gardner, Judy Irving and others round out the eclectic series. Tributes to Mexican science fiction, the Romanian New Wave and the Residents ensure a little something for everyone, but surely the centerpiece of the PFA's summer is the complete Akira Kurosawa retrospective being held in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Completists are already drooling over the chance to see rarities like Sanshiro Sugata I & II and the Quiet Duel on the big screen, but Berekely is not the only place to get an A.K. fix in June. On this side of the bridge, the Embarcadero will screen a new print of Kurosawa's most famous color film, Ran for a week beginning June 4th. And four of the master's most noirish black-and-white films will play in 35mm prints at the still-new VIZ Cinema at Post and Webster Streets that same week: Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, the Bad Sleep Well and High and Low are the titles, not a samurai sword among them. The VIZ lineup for June is truly jawdropping for those of us who can't get enough classic Japanese cinema. After a week of Kurosawa films, the Japantown venue will bring four Yasujiro Ozu films including his most-widely-acknowledged masterpiece Tokyo Story, his following film Early Spring, and two earlier films I've been wishing to see return to Frisco Bay since I missed them during his PFA centennial six and a half years ago: The Only Son and Record Of A Tenement Gentlemen. As if that weren't enough, VIZ will screen four Kenji Mizoguchi masterpieces (I confidently say this not having seen all of them) June 19-24: Sisters of The Gion (pictured above), Ugetsu Monogatari, Street of Shame and Utamaro and His Five Women (the one I haven't seen yet). This is a truly special set of twelve films VIZ is bringing in June, each with multiple playdates, so go to as many as you can while you can, and tell your friends, if you want to encourage future screenings of Japanese classics on this side of Frisco Bay, where they've been pretty scarce in recent years.
VIZ Cinema, which until recently focused on screening the films of its affiliated DVD label almost exclusively, is obviously stretching its programming muscles, and if this keeps up it will rapidly become one of the most exciting venues on Frisco Bay. Also to play there in June are two programs with a South Asian, rather than East Asian, focus: 3rd i's Queer Eye, an outpost of LGBT films presented by the folks who bring the South Asian Film Festival to town every November, and the locally-made Indian diasporic film Bicycle Bride.
What else is happening in June? The previously-mentioned "I Still Wake Up Dreaming" series experienced rush line level crowds for some of its 35mm screenings, as well as some technical difficulties in the sound quality of certain of the 16mm prints it showed, so programmer Elliot Lavine and the Roxie Theater decided to reprise some of the affected films from June 4. I wholeheartedly recommend the June 6th double-bill in particular, featuring the two best films I saw at the festival: Phil Karlson's luckless boxer nailbiter 99 River Street, and the sultry policier Cop Hater. Everyone seemed to love the cameo-studded rat pack gangster film Johnny Cool but me; it plays June 4 if you want to see for yourself. (For me, it couldn't live up to its theme song.) The Fearmakers, Jacques Tourneur's 1958 expose of the communist infiltration of Washington, D.C. publicity firms is not among the director's great films, but it's an interesting time capsule worth a look in 35mm; it plays June 6th along with a 35mm print of Nightmare, which I missed the first time around. I also missed the three 16mm prints that suffered the worst sound problems, and which will play on a triple-bill June 7th, for free for those who attended their prior screenings and for $11 for the rest of us. Gustav Machatý's Jealousy sounds the most intriguing of the trio.
Oakland's Paramount Theatre begins its summer film series the same weekend, with a June 4 screening of the late Lynn Redgrave's defining film Georgy Girl. Other films scheduled to screen at Frisco Bay's largest, most opulent (if intermittently-utilized) movie palace are the original King Kong July 9, E.T. July 23, and the great Howard Hawks film To Have And Have Not August 6. The Rafael Film Center will play the 1937 Prisoner of Zenda as a special presentation with Oscar winners Craig Barron and Ben Burtt on June 13. SFMOMA screens Clint Eastwood's first directorial effort Play Misty For Me June 10. And the Red Vic has a new calendar on the streets with its usual combination of second-run, repertory, and special event bookings. The documentary on influential filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar (the latter of whom gets a rare solo show at Artists' Television Access June 5) called It Came From Kuchar makes its landing June 14 & 15. Bong Joon-ho's Mother plays June 16 & 17 (his The Host plays the PFA June 18), the sheepherding documentary Sweetgrass appears July 12 & 13, and Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop closes the door on this particular calendar August 6-9. Along with the theatre's annual anniversary screenings of Harold and Maude (July 25-28) the Red Vic celebrates its 30th year of operation by showcasing three winners of a recent audience poll of its favorite repertory films. The winners: Alejandro Jodorowski's El Topo (August 1 & 2) takes the bronze, Dead Man (August 3 & 4) the silver, and Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (July 18 & 19) the gold. I'm a deep admirer of all three of these not-quite-canonized films. Congratulations to Red Vic patrons on your discerning and non-conforming taste!
The Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto still has a few more weeks left on its appetizing current calendar, which ends with a Josef Von Sternberg double-bill (Morocco and The Devil Is A Woman) June 16-18. The day after that, another southerly film venue plays another Sternberg film, this time one of his most highly-regarded silent films, the Last Command. The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, tucked in a lovely corner of Fremont, will present that Oscar-winning film with Jon Mirsalis providing musical accompaniment on Kurzweil synthesizer. It's part of the Silent Film Museum's busiest month of the year; the first weekend in June is given over to Charlie Chaplin Days, honoring the most well-known actor to have worked in Niles back when Hollywood's supremacy as California's movie-making hub was not yet secure. The Gold Rush and other Chaplin films will screen. The final weekend of the month brings a festival named for a cowboy star who was every bit as well-known as Chaplin in his day, but has become something of a footnote today. This year's 13th Annual Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival features seven different programs of features and short subjects starring figures once famous to all, but now forgotten to most moviegoers, such as Wallace Reid, J. Warren Kerrigan, and G.M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson himself. An early (1920) King Vidor-directed film, the Jack-Knife Man promises to be a high point of the weekend.
Frisco's own Silent Film Festival has announced its program as well; expanded to a four-day event for its 15th edition, the festival has really outdone itself in lining up well-known and rare silent films, musicians, and special guests for the July 15-18 event. I will surely have more to say on this festival in the weeks to come, but in the meantime, Lincoln Spector has covered some of the highlights. This marks the sixth time I've contributed a contextual essay for the festival's program booklet, a copy of which will be handed to every attendee at the Castro that weekend. "My" film, this time around, has been Dziga Vertov's magnum opus Man With A Movie Camera, which will screen on Sunday afternoon, July 18th, with the Alloy Orchestra performing its critically-acclaimed musical score based on Vertov's 1929 instructions. Familiarizing myself with the history of early Soviet film-making, and sorting through the mountains of material written on Vertov in particular, has made for one of the most challenging and rewarding research projects I've attempted yet. I hope that the end-products (a pre-screening slide show, as well as the essay) prove valuable to festgoers. I have no doubt that the screening and musical performance will be entertaining and eye-opening for people who have already seen Man With A Movie Camera, and for those who haven't. If there was ever a film that deserves repeat viewings, this is it.
While looking through libraries and archives, trying to better understand the conditions under which Vertov's films were screened for the public in his day, I found a collection of program notes from The Film Society Of London which thrust my imagination back into early 1930s art-cinema exhibition. The Film Society had been founded in 1925 by Anthony Asquith, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, and H.G. Wells among other original members. In early 1931 the group screened Man With a Movie Camera on a program with a Silly Symphony (Artic Antics), a set of color (excuse me, colour) photography tests from British and American companies, an Austrian puppet play (The Dragon Prince), and a section of Alberto Cavalcanti's Little Red Riding Hood. Later that year, the same venue played Vertov's first sound film, Enthusiasm with the director personally in attendance; this was two days prior to Charlie Chaplin's famous pronouncement: "Never had I known that these mechanical sounds could be arranged to seem so beautiful...Mr. Dziga Vertov is a musician. The professors should learn from him not quarrel with him." In late 1935 Vertov's following film Three Songs About Lenin screened on a bill with Cavalcanti's GPO documentary Coal Face and Len Lye's Kaleidoscope among other short subjects.
I find it thrilling to learn such details about a bygone era of cinephilia, in which leading playwrights, novelists, and economists rubbed shoulders with animators, documentarians, film technologists, and avant-garde filmmakers from home and abroad. I do wonder what the membership requirements of The Film Society of London were like-- did one have to be a living legend to gain access, or are those simply the member names that have been handed down to us? Is there an equivalent of that activity today amidst the film festivals and venues right here in this town? I know that there are others who would disagree with me, but I just love that the SF Silent Film Festival programs films of diverse types, from all the corners of the world it can, alongside the justly classic and unjustly obscure entertainments from the Hollywood studio era. An 'us vs. them' attitude about independent and foreign filmmaking no doubt existed among some American film producers of the era, but in some corners of film appreciation, it feels like boundaries (national, stylistic, genre, etc.) are being patrolled more fiercely than ever. The Film Society Of London appeared to smash these kinds of barriers in its day, and from what I understand, early programming at places like SFMOMA did the same in the 1930s, mixing the avant-garde, documentary, an popular animation from various countries of origin, all on the same program.
Eighty years ago feels like a world away, but another little discovery made it seem just a little bit closer: on the back of the program for the Three Songs of Lenin screening was a list of films that had their British premiere at The Film Society in 1934-5, and it included (along with Jean Vigo's Zero For Conduct and Basil Wright's Song of Ceylon) a title I saw at the Pacific Film Archive a year and a half ago, Douro by Manoel de Oliveira. A silent, poetic documentary that was clearly made by a man who was then a young contemporary of Walter Ruttmann, Joris Ivens, and Vertov, Douro is almost certainly the only remaining silent-era debut film made by a director who is not only still living, but still making films, at 101 years of age. And here was his name listed amidst those of long-dead filmmakers who it's hard not to think of as belonging to a long-dead era.
While Oliveira's latest film just debuted alongside Apichatpong's in Cannes (Dennis Lim found the pair comparable highlights), his previous one is poised to make its first appearance here on Frisco Bay, also in June, at pretty much the only major local film venue I haven't yet mentioned in this post, the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts. Called Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl, on June 24, 26 & 27 it wraps up what looks to be an extremely strong month at the venue that has allowed me to see more Apichatpong Weerasethakul films than any other. No, YBCA hasn't announced plans to screen Uncle Boonmee yet, but they will be showing, in addition to the Oliveira, three films any serious cinephile will probably want to experience: Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers June 3-6, Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay June 12-13 (both of which have been among the most contentious new films of the past year's film festival circuit) and Catherine Breillat's wonderful Bluebeard June 17-19. If Apichatpong, Korine, Mendoza and Breillat can be counted as contemporaries of Oliveira (and why not), and Oliveira was a contemporary of Vertov, Vigo and Chaplin, then the boundary between contemporary and "old" cinema is obliterated. What a refreshing thought!
Friday, May 28, 2010
What I'm Thinking About This Week
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Apichatpong Weerasethakul connections
When I watch a film by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, it's no struggle to see it in the latter mode. Apichatpong's strategies especially invite the observation of them as part of a continuum. As critic Chuck Stephens has said of the director's filmography, "Something in one film will establish something that will recur in the next film, or there'll be a reminder of something in one film from a previous film."
So as a strong admirer of the filmmaker's feature-length films, I've been particularly grateful that Frisco venue Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has decided to show two programs of Apichatpong's rarely-screened short works, none of which I'd seen before. Unfortunately, the one-week postponement of the screenings has prevented me from watching them on the Yerba Buena's screen; I was able to make sure my work schedule didn't conflict with the originally posted dates, but unable to take time off on short notice to see the rescheduled shows. 
Each short I watched (all those in Program 1, which played on Thursday, and all but one film in Program 2, which plays tomorrow at 2PM) brought up rhymes, resonances, and questions from at least one of the feature-length works I've seen from Apichatpong's filmography. This is a beginning, by no means exhaustive :
Program One (already occurred):
One of my favorites of the set, this brief piece recalls Tropical Malady and especially Syndromes and a Century in its marriage of exuberantly catchy pop music to large-scale group exercise.
Windows, 1999
Perhaps the piece I most wish I could have seen on as large a screen as possible, this completely abstract study of light, rhythm and the camera mechanism nonetheless takes place in a room that reminded me of the settings of the director's hour-long video work Haunted Houses from 2001, even if the nature of each film's laboratory quality is completely different. I also have to wonder if some of what Apichatpong learned about light streaming through a window in 1999 was later applied to certain scenes in Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady.
Malee and the Boy, 1999
Made before his first feature, Mysterious Object at Noon, this color video work feels if not like a technical, then a spiritual precursor to the latter, which was shot on 16mm and 8mm and blown up to 35mm. Both pieces emphasize the communal nature of Apichatpong's work in a very front-and-center way, by putting unskilled collaborators (in this case a young boy who recorded the soundtrack in various Bangkok locales, as the director followed him) in control of the narrative.
This film brought forth connections to many of Apichatpong's credits, but none more than a film he did not direct but is credited with contributing a story idea to: I-San Special, made by Mingmongkul Sonakul in 2002, which like this film features a Thai radio drama as soundtrack over images of a group of passengers being driven from Point A to Point B. Chuck Stephens, in the same (unfortunately technically compromised) DVD commentary track that I quoted from near the beginning of this piece, brings up I-San Special, asking Apichatpong about a never-filmed project called Driving that apparently became the inspiration for Mingmongkol's film. When reviewing her film, Time Out New York refers to Driving as an "early short", with no mention that it never was filmed by Apichatpong. It makes me wonder if the Time Out reviewer was conflating the non-existent film with Like the Relentless Fury of the Pounding Waves...
Thirdworld, 1998
I'll be honest: of the nine short I saw, this is the piece that felt the most impenetrable to me upon a single viewing. I'd like to take another stab at it, but in the meantime I'd rather not write anything about it, other than to point out that since I watched it I've learned its production connection to Mysterious Object at Noon.
Program Two: (Sunday, July 6, 2PM)
Like Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady, this 40-minute piece (co-directed by Pimpaka Towira, whose thriller One Night Husband is referenced in a scene in Tropical Malady in which the poster is visible) is set in a forest. But though at one point or another I thought of just about every one of his major works, what formed the most active mental connection for me was the resonance of its musical presentation to another forest-set feature co-directed by Apichatpong, this time with drag performer Michael Shaowanasai: the Adventure of Iron Pussy. For Apichatpong, the forest is an important sphere in which the expected norms of culture and society cannot hold the same deep influence that they can in civilization and especially inside government buildings. Both Worldly Desires and the Adventure of Iron Pussy fit into that conception as well as any of his films. As an aside: is it coincidence that his feature film that traverses territory farthest from the forest, Syndromes and a Century, is the one that has had the most publicly visible struggles with the self-appointed arbiters of cultural norms?
0116643225059, 1994
The earliest of the pieces seen is this one, titled after a phone number, and pictured at the top of this post. It shows that the budding director was from very early in his career concerned with investigating the schism between soundtrack and image, as he has been in most if not all of his subsequent works.
Ghost of Asia, 2005
The most purely enjoyable of all the pieces I viewed (though competition for that standing is pretty stiff from certain corners), this successor to Mysterious Object at Noon features Sakda Kaewbuadee, the "tiger" from Tropical Malady and the music-loving monk from Syndromes and a Century, as a kind of puppet-actor being controlled by the whims of a young team of "screenwriters" who appear in the other frame of a digital split-screen. It has a credited co-director in Christelle Lheureux, but that understates its collaborative authorship.
This piece of mixed-media animation reminded me that when I once rewatched the superimposed-drawing scenes from Blissfully Yours after seeing some Jim Trainor films I had to wonder if Apichatpong's time studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago overlapped at all with Trainor's employment as a professor there, if he had come across Trainor's work by some other means, or if he was wholly ignorant of Trainor yet shared some aesthetic strategies nonetheless.
Luminous People, 2007
This is the only piece I did not get a chance to see on screener, and I also was out of town when it played the YBCA as part of the State of the World omnibus in January of this year. I'll miss it again tomorrow, but would love to get your comments on it if you had a chance to see it.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Mysterious Objects, Exquisite Corpses
Last night I got to see my favorite film from last year on 35mm again. For free! The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts screening room, the same venue at which I first saw Syndromes and a Century over a year ago, unspooled this lovely, entrancing film again as a replacement screening for a set of its Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's short video works, which had been delayed in shipping from the prior venue at which they played.
Michael Guillén was first on the blogosphere to report the switch. I was initially disappointed that the shorts would be delayed a week (they now are set to play July 3rd and July 6th; half on one day and half on the other.) But the opportunity to see a bright, beautiful print of Apichatpong's latest feature film again in a screening room free of the distractions of home (or the multiplex; YBCA audiences are very respectful as a rule) is about as perfect a substitution as could be imagined. And the Syndromes and a Century print is still in town, and plays again on Sunday at 2PM, also for free!
I urge you to attend, especially if you have not seen this film before, but are interested in cinema as memory, as mood, as cultural self-examination, and not necessarily as story. It's true that I can trace my deep admiration for Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul's films back past the screenings at YBCA and the Pacific Film Archive and the local film festivals which have shown his work, to the time I once spent living and working in Thailand itself. But as I commented on Barry Jenkins' blog:
I'm not certain this experience has helped me "understand" Syndromes and a Century any more than anyone else does. Yet I do feel I do understand it, not on the level of analysis or even recognition of Joe's motifs from other films, or of bits and pieces of the Thai culture I was exposed to. It feels like a more universal, more cinematic understanding. And it's combined with a perhaps even more overwhelming lack of understanding, that somehow doesn't get in the way of appreciation at all.Of course, it was hard for me not to view the film with the censorship it has suffered in its home country near the front of my mind. During one of the censored scenes, the print appeared to have weathered some damage (green outlines of what looked like sprocket holes on the side of the frame- any film projectionists reading this know what that means?) and it served as a reminder that when the film was finally screened in Bangkok, that entire scene was replaced by black leader. Apichatpong himself has called this censored version "a corpse, not a film." I cannot avoid noticing the irony that a film that so gently points out the absurdity of blithely waltzing toward modernity (one theme among many in this rich work) has attracted a decidedly un-gentle smackdown from a censorship system seemingly bent on keeping Thai movies as old-fashioned as possible...
More links well worth reading on Syndromes and a Century: Michael Guillén's interview, Daniel Kasman's review, Peter Nellhaus's comments on the DVD release, and Thai cinephile CelineJulie's report from a Bangkok screening.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Syndromes and a Censor
NOTE: THIS ENTRY, ORIGINALLY POSTED AT THE CINEMARATI SITE, HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM AN INTERNET CACHE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 6/28/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED. UNFORTUNATELY, COMMENTS HAVE BEEN REMOVED AND ARE CLOSED.
Last night I finally got to see the new film I’ve been anticipating with more fervor than any other in the past six months, Syndromes and a Century by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (whose Tropical Malady was Cinemarati’s #10 film of 2005). This privilege felt bittersweet, however, knowing that Thai moviegoers, who had been anticipating the film at least as fervently as I, had just been denied an opportunity to see it on local cinema screens. As reported by Kong Rithdee, the Thai Censorship Board has demanded that Apichatpong cut four scenes from the film before letting it be released as scheduled on two Bangkok screens April 18th. The director refused to make the cuts, stating in the introduction to an online petition:If these offspring of mine cannot live in their own country for whatever reasons, let them be free. Since there are other places that warmly welcome them as who they are, there is no reason to mutilate them from the fear of the system, or from greed. Otherwise there is no reason for one to continue making art.If you’ve seen Blissfully Yours and are imagining the censored scenes might bear a resemblance to the sexually explicit images in that film, you might be surprised to learn that the contested content actually involves scenes with comparatively tame images:
1. A robed monk plays an acoustic guitar.
2. A doctor kisses his girlfriend while in his office, both fully clothed. A close-up of his crotch reveals that he is sexually aroused.
3. Another doctor hides whisky in a prosthetic leg in a hospital basement, and offers to share it with her colleagues, some of whom oblige.
4. A robed monk plays with a toy flying saucer in a city park.
It seems that these images are controversial because they show a human side to authority figures that are normally expected in Thai society to be portrayed in a very austere manner, even if it runs counter to the reality of daily life in modern Thailand. I’ve seen Thai monks playing guitars and otherwise recreating. Apichatpong’s parents are both doctors, so if any filmmaker might know about the behavior of the Thai medical profession when patients are not around, it would be him. Not that Apichatpong’s films employ documentary realism, or should be judged by those standards, of course. But a quote from a representative of the Thai Medical Council, "drinking whisky in a hospital is not proper conduct by medical professionals," betrays a rather simplistic understanding of the function and force of art in modern culture.
Syndromes and a Century itself shows the friction between as well as the gravity connecting the traditional and the modern, which befits a work commissioned for the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Perhaps it was somehow inevitable that the Thai government, currently at something of a crossroads following last fall’s coup that left the country in the hands of the military, might react negatively to some of the situations in Apichatpong’s unconventional film. Somehow this quote by George Bernard Shaw seems appropriate:
The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.I encourage you to sign the petition here.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
For those who have seen Tropical Malady
NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 5/14/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.
Friday night's event at the Pacific Film Archive, in which Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul guided the audience through a screening of his 2004 Cannes prize-winner Tropical Malady, marked perhaps the first time I was thankful, with no reservations whatsoever, that a theatrical screening was being projected from a DVD rather than a 35mm print. Such a print had been shown the previous night for the benefit of those of us who wanted to soak up the richness of the film's images in their full glory, but this night was to be devoted less to pure aesthetic pleasure than to textual analysis. With Apichatpong (or "Joe", as he is often called) in front of a microphone with his hand on a remote control allowing him to pause, slow forward, or adjust the audio level at will, it was a unique chance for something like a live director's audio commentary only all the more illuminating for its flexibility. Not only did Joe provide his own personal reflections and interpretations on this famously enigmatic film at precisely opportune moments, but PFA curator Steve Seid also asked audience members to call out "stop" when we thought of a question to ask for ourselves. After putting forth a poorly-worded query fairly early in the process I found myself too shy to pursue more, but others had some very insightful questions triggering fascinating answers.Joe made several disclosures that I'd never remembered reading in reviews or interviews (perhaps I've just read the wrong ones), or hearing in the audio commentary discussion with Chuck Stephens on the Strand DVD. Some are interesting little tidbits regarding production, while others feel right now something like world-shattering revelations that cast the film in an entirely new light. Maybe there's a bit of both in all of them. I'll share a few of them (in paraphrase), but I implore you not to read further unless you've seen Tropical Malady before. I get the sense that Joe would rather that these tidbits/revelations not interfere with anyone's first experience with this very personal film for him. a.k.a. SPOILER WARNING!!!
1. One reason why the film is credited to three directors of photography is that working with Jean-Louis Vialard (Investigations Into the Invisible World, Dans Paris) was frustrating and he was soon taken off the film. Apparently his aggressive style of persuasion did not mesh well with the Thai style of making a film (or Joe's style, anyway). Vialard was adamant that certain shots be captured just a certain way, which required very long periods of time to set up the lighting.
My reaction: Maybe Vialard ought to have read a book like this before taking on the job? I must say, however, that the one shot Joe singled out as taking Vialard particularly long to set up (a half day), the one just before the end of the film's first half, in which Tong sits up from his bed, his body bifurcated by light and shadow, is particularly beautiful and perhaps on some level the key shot in the film.
2. According to Joe, one idea he had when making Tropical Malady is that all of the male characters in the film would be gay. Not only did he express this through certain casting choices and direction of actors, but also in design details such as posters adorning the walls of his locations.
My reaction: It's impossible not to notice the unblinking acceptance of homosexuality by the characters in Tropical Malady, including Tong's family who seem completely at ease with his interest in the soldier Keng, the sisters who offer to smoke the two lovers out, and essentially everyone else in the film. And there is definitely a lot of other flirtatious behavior with other men in the film, in scenes like the one in the pool hall for example. The entire first half of the film, at least up to the point of the roadside beating, feels like it exists in some kind of utopia. (Some have found the first half of the film to be so conflict-free as to be completely unsatisfying.) But it seems Joe's unifying idea behind this utopian state is one that never occurred to me at all. Fascinating food for further thought.
3. Tropical Malady has been praised for its sound design, in which the ambient sounds of the jungle and other environments are turned way up in the mix to a highly visceral level in a theatre with a good sound system. But according to the director, in Thailand there were many complaints that in certain scenes the dialogue was not audible enough to understand. Joe admitted that he didn't really mind that Thais couldn't clearly hear certain dialogue, an example being the conversation in which Keng tells Tong, "When I gave you the Clash tape I forgot to give you my heart."
My reaction: Though it might be tempting to use this disclosure as evidence that he makes his films for subtitle-reading festival audiences without thinking of audiences from own country, I think there's reason to conclude the contrary. In his DVD commentary with Chuck Stephens, Joe makes it clear that he's a little uncomfortable about the corniness of some of this lovestruck dialogue; it seems to me that he'd almost rather the audience not be let into his characters' private moment. Perhaps the Thai version, in which the dialogue can't really be made out, better represents his authorial intention in certain scenes than a fully subtitled version does.
I'm also interested in the way Joe deals with the foregrounding and withholding of sounds because I feel like his ideas on this front are interacting with the relatively short history of sound cinema in Thailand; as far as I know, no other country's film industry experienced a longer silent film era. As I understand it, it wasn't until the 1970s that Thai films stopped being distributed without soundtracks, with local troupes of voice actors providing the film dialogue in each village, a practice often seen as a holdover from the benshi-style narration practiced throughout East Asia until sound cinema displaced it, country by country, starting in the 1930s. What this has to do with Joe's films and videos is fodder for an entirely other realm of inquiry that I hope to explore someday.
4. The shot in which Keng rests against a tree was based on an old photograph of a resting hunter that Joe particularly liked. He asked the actor to hold the same pose as that of the subject of the photograph.My reaction: More ammunition for a reading of Joe's work as postmodernist. He's clearly interested in a dialogue with imagemakers of the past, and not just those in the motion picture field. It's a great composition, anyway.
5. When you hear the sound of dogs crying in the distance, they were inspired by Joe's appreciation of hearing the same in Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry.
My reaction: I think this is the first confirmation I've heard that Joe has definitely been influenced by Kiarostami, though it's a contention that many critics have put forth. Even in this interview, in which he's asked to react to comparisons between his work and Hou Hsiao-Hsien's, Tsai Ming-Liang's, and Kiarostami's, Joe cops to a personal connection to Hou and Tsai, but essentially punts on the question of Kiarostami.
6. The shot of the tiger staring intently at Keng at the end of the film could never have been achieved naturally; tigers just don't do that sort of thing for the camera. Actually, the image was achieved through digital compositing by the German visual effects house that also worked on the ghostly zebu and the luminous tree effects. In fact the tiger's movements have been randomized and looped.
My reaction: Watch carefully the next time you see the film, and you'll definitely notice the loop. It's a pretty cool effect.
This event has definitely been a major highlight of my cinematic year so far, and I'm now all the more hungry to finally see Syndromes and a Century at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts next weekend. It gets six showings (five evening, one matinee) Friday through Sunday. Hopefully I can make it to at least two of them.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Catch the Malady
NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 6/18/2010. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION.
Sitting at home all weekend trying to work the rest cure for my aching throat is also a good excuse to watch movies (and update the blog). Mostly I've been in Criterion-land. I watched The Lady Eve with Marion Keane's commentary track on. I haven't listened to that many DVD commentaries in my day, but this is the most delightful scholarly commentary I've heard. Keane seems about to burst with joy in every sentence she speaks. This is either due to her love of Preston Sturges, or her love of her own analytical insights. Either way its justified in my view, though I can sympathize with those who can't stand her kind of reading, in which every detail of the film can be interpreted as a comment on the nature of filmmaking. I guess I was never forced to sit through a bad version of this kind of analysis in film school so it feels like a breath of fresh air to me. I'd love to hear Keane's commentaries for Hitchcock films.
I also watched the last four episodes of Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage. I'd started out trying to ration them one a day, recreating the way they were originally broadcast, but after the third episode, Paula, I was too sucked in to help myself. Then I watched all the extras. These three-disc sets can be overwhelming!
I also popped in my Region 3 disc of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady in the hopes that watching some of it would inspire me to say something truly insightful about this incredible film before it plays at the Castro Theatre at 9PM on Monday. After having seen the film twice last November it feels like revisiting an old friend, but subtle things I missed before become clearer and clearer each time. Like the very first shot of the soldiers finding the dead body on patrol. It looks like a man, but they're handling it as if it were a wild beast. This is all obfuscated by Apichatpong's deceptively wavering camera which always frames the soldiers' faces and torsos in the center, their discovery never more than barely in the shot.
I only watched about 15 minutes before I decided I wanted to let the film surprise me all over again on the Castro's giant screen. I'm especially excited about letting the "pure cinema" second half of the film immerse me. Look for me in one of the first few rows. That said, so far I disagree with those who call the first half of the film comparatively weak. I think its full of fascinating, beautiful moments and that its contrasting style works in dialogue with the wordless second half. At least, that's what I thought last November. We'll see if I change my mind at all on Monday.
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