young Thai director
BY THE TIME IT GETS DARK (Dao Khanong) C+
Thailand France Netherlands
Qatar (105 mi) 2016 d: Anocha Suwichakornpong
When we saw something
unjust, we protested, unlike nowadays.
—Taew (Rassami Paoluengtong)
While the title suggests a horror theme, or some impending
doom, the film only hints at what it’s about, seemingly hidden behind veiled
thoughts and images, as if free speech is not something available to this
filmmaker (who received her masters at the Columbia University Film School), suggesting
she could potentially be arrested under a militaristic governmental regime, so
thoughts and ideas are intentionally clouded, where the truth lies safely
protected behind guarded thoughts. What
this implies is that Thai artists continue to wage war against government
censors, where after the assumption of power by a military junta in the May 2014 coup d'état, the National Legislative Assembly is militarily
appointed, where artists and political dissidents become easy targets, much
like living in the era of the East German Stasi secret police, where blatant
government criticism is considered a crime, arresting and imprisoning violators
until they sign an agreement not to engage in political activity. Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Cemetery
of Splendor (Rak ti Khon Kaen) (2015), has had his own incidents with
government censors, especially his frank depiction of sex scenes or gay love,
with nearly all his films being banned or receiving only limited screenings in
Thailand, despite the worldwide acclaim his films have received elsewhere. Thailand remains a monarchy, ruled by a king
and his royal family, where it’s currently punishable by fifteen years in
prison for criticizing the king or insulting the royal family, with more than
100 charged in the past few years, where just this month a Thai man was
sentenced to 35 years for his Facebook postings, (June 9, 2017, Man
jailed for 35 years in Thailand for insulting monarchy on ...), a
particularly draconian act. So what this
film actually represents is a camouflage of intentions, masking criticism with
artistic subterfuge, creating an illusory world that for all practical purposes
is opaque and hard to read, often feeling meaningless, unless you’re willing to
dig deep enough. It’s difficult to
evaluate films under these circumstances, though it’s nothing like Dreyer’s DAY
OF WRATH (1943), shot during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, or Rossellini’s
ROME: OPEN CITY (1945), shot in the
immediate aftermath of war, and is probably closer to what Iranian filmmakers
are forced to endure, some of whom are currently under house arrest.
While the approach used is fictional, restaging an
historical atrocity on a movie set, while stage hands with bullhorns are
shouting at the soldiers to be more cruel, the reference is to the 6 October 1976 massacre, a
particularly brutal retaliation to student demonstrators outraged at the return
from exile of a formerly disgraced dictator, with police charging the students
insulted the Crown Prince in their exaggerated mockery, opening the floodgates
to government-sanctioned militia groups to respond to this perceived insult,
with 4000 to 5000 students arrested at Bangkok’s Thammasat University after a
morning firefight rounded up and herded students into a soccer field, where
they were stripped to the waist and handcuffed, with some of the wounded
bleeding to death as they were forced to lay on their stomachs, many others
were shot and killed, reportedly as many as 100, while others trying to escape
were beaten to death by a surrounding angry mob, a few were strung up to a tree
and hanged, while others were burned alive.
It’s a particularly grotesque incident that remains an unspoken and
taboo subject for Thai citizens. Accordingly, the scene shifts to a peaceful
retreat in the country where filmmaker Ann (Visra Vichit-Vadakan) is interviewing
a writer who was a former activist, Taew (Rassami Paoluengtong), recalling her
memories of the event in question, using flashback sequences to portray a
younger version of herself at the university, though there’s no real
connection, just a skip in time where the director uses a completely different
set of actors to portray a reality that is being remembered, though we’re never
sure if this is Taew’s recollection or the director’s recreation of
events. Continually blurring the lines
between memory and truth, the director even resorts to waking dreams, as Ann
wakes in the middle of the night only to meet a future version of herself
sitting silently with a much younger version of Taew, while all three sit and
collectively sip tea together. Reality
is intertwined with these elusive memories, as in an otherwise random moment,
Nong (Atchara Suwan), a recurring character initially seen as a waitress at a
café overhears their discussion, wondering why a film director was writing
about events that actually happened to Taew, who is herself a writer,
suggesting she should be the one writing her own memories.
A visit to a nearby farm reveals how they grow local
mushrooms, using time-lapse photography as we watch their sudden growth, which
morphs into an early Georges Méliès classic from 1902, Le Voyage Dans la Lune, "Le Voyage dans la
Lune" George Méliès 1902 (Original version ... (13:56), seen around
the 9:30 mark, with giant umbrella mushrooms incredulously sprouting on the
moon, perhaps suggesting hallucinogenic properties. Without any warning, a completely new set of
characters appear onscreen, as if from a different movie, where Peter (Arak
Amornsupasiri) is seen harvesting tobacco leaves before he’s cleaned up and
suddenly becomes a famous pop star, seen shooting a music video before hanging
out with friends, also seen reading a movie script written especially for him,
where he obviously lives a privileged existence. As if in contrast, Nong is seen in anonymous
roles, a cleaner in an upscale hotel, a server on a river cruise ship, seen in
a momentary pause looking at the city passing by while adrift on the water,
where the stunning cinematography by Ming Kai Leung recalls the breathtaking
beauty of Bresson’s Four
Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur) (1971), before seen again
with her head shaved doing chores at a Buddhist monastery, with repeated images
of the back sides of closely shaved heads, yet one of the more intriguing
scenes shows her as a spectator at a live musical show, where a kaleidoscope of
lights explodes above her head, leading to what amounts to the scene of the
film, an abstract digitalized montage of a projector breakdown, a corrupt, pixel-exploding
electronic distortion recalling the final shot of Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane
Blacktop (1971), where then it was celluloid melting onscreen. This momentary disruption suddenly transforms
into a florescent landscape of lush green foliage, though the sky is blood red-colored,
holding the shot until the color is slowly corrected, finally turning into a
blue sky. Perhaps the unknown variable
in all this is the unsung presence of Nong throughout the film, who bears a
silent witness without comment, where even the film title appears to be
randomly selected, as near the end, a car on a city expressway passes by a road
sign that reads Dao Khanong, which is a neighborhood in Bangkok. Despite the strange, seemingly
stream-of-conscious turns in the film, where any hint at a narrative becomes
increasingly detached until it all but disappears into a deep void, quite
possibly the never mentioned “black hole in Thai history,” as described by the
director. While seemingly intriguing, by
the end, little of this makes sense, as Thai films, including Weerasethakul’s
latest, tend to be inert, emotionally empty, and unengaging, without an ounce of dynamism. This is painfully evident throughout, where
the film never establishes an internalized connection with any of the
characters, nor does it attempt to provide a depth to match the more
sophisticated visual imagery. This
aspect of humanism is simply missing.
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