By the Time It Gets Dark (Dao Khanong)

 



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. 

Stray Dogs (Jiao you)

STRAY DOGS (Jiao you)                    B     
Taiwan  France  (138 mi)  2013  d:  Tsai Ming-liang

A film like this should be required viewing for patrons of Hollywood action movies, whose attention deficit disorder mindset has become synonymous with American mainstream culture, where viewers should be locked in a room until they can write an essay explaining why this film could win critical acclaim and festival prizes, as this was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Venice where it premiered.  If all they can say is it’s “garbage” or “a complete waste of time,” which will likely be their first inclination, let them keep trying until they come up with something more substantial.  Tsai Ming-liang began making films that had more of a narrative aspect to them, but were largely expressed through avant-garde or experimental imagery, where he has always shown a proficiency for slow cinema, near wordless long takes and little explanation for what’s taking place onscreen.  As his career evolved, the narrative aspect nearly disappeared and his films have only gotten even slower, with long shots on a single held image, a throwback to many Warhol films, creating an effect that can only be linked with the visual mastery of other experimental filmmakers, where his long takes, many beyond the 10-minute mark, rival Michael Snow or James Benning.  As his films are shown at film festivals with more traditional forms of cinema, they tend to stand out, and there are inevitable walk-outs from viewers who simply can’t tolerate the completely different stylistic approach.  However, if they want to see this director in pure entertainment mode, they’d do well to check out the absurdly hilarious colorful artificiality of THE HOLE (1998), something of an apocalyptic ode to Hollywood musicals.  Tsai Ming-liang has always made movies about alienation, where he was born in Malaysia before moving to Taiwan, feeling like an outsider in each culture, never able to feel accepted anywhere.  Like American black artists of the 20th century who found more acceptance in Paris than at home, Tsai migrated to Paris and began receiving European funding for his films, and was one of the only filmmakers ever allowed to film inside the Louvre Museum in his prior film FACE (2009).  

With this film, his 11th feature, the director has announced it will be his last and final film, which would be a shame.  He is well liked among cinephiles largely because what he brings to the world of cinema is so unlike anyone else.  Even if you don’t dramatically engage with his films on a personal level, as they are so extremely emotionally detached, there’s always something in every one of his films that stands out, and it’s usually different for each viewer.  Much like watching an Ozu film, Tsai’s slower pace forces viewers to alter the way they watch films, as you’re not figuring out whodunit or looking for clues, and while there may be violence, it’s an entirely different approach, as it’s mostly internalized.  Instead you’re simply gazing at whatever incredible images happen to be onscreen.  The actor Lee Kang-Sheng has been in every one of Tsai’s films, becoming the director’s alter ego, where his wordless, deadpan acting style has more in common with Silent era cinema.  What story there is concerns a homeless father (Lee) living on the fringes of Tapei while raising two young children, entering into the mainstream during the day, but then disappearing into the outer margins by night, encamped in an abandoned concrete structure they’ve inhabited.  Without any indication, the film is really divided in half, where without initially realizing it, the second half may actually precede the first half, where the only real clue is the changing faces of the mother figure, who may or may not be the same character.  Initially separated from the children’s mother, the kids eat on the street and spend their time tasting free samples and running freely through the aisles of a modern supermarket, where a grocery clerk, Lu Yi-ching, takes a personal interest in the often abandoned children, as the father’s job requires him to stand on the side of the highway hoisting a billboard on a stick and simply remain standing there in all manner of weather.  Here he endures typhoon-like winds and is forced to endure the everpresent deluge of rain. 

Most of the film is spent wandering through the crumbling back regions of the city, through industrialized lots, unfinished construction sites, dilapidated buildings, and overgrown bush, where Tsai has an acute eye for visual irony, much like Jacques Tati in PLAYTIME (1967), where winding stairs lead into a dreamlike futuristic abstraction, much like a M.C. Escher drawing, where a clever use of camera angles produces an optical illusion of architectural impossibility, while the sterile and washed out look of the modernistic supermarket is reminiscent of Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s austere documentaries.  But the decaying ruins of a home in the second half feels more like what’s left after fire damage, where the walls appear covered in soot, with oddly shaped fungi growing at random, and here the mother is Chen Shian-chyi, seen in the opening shot combing her hair.  The deepening divide with her aloof husband is perfectly expressed when she fumigates the bathtub and his clothes after he takes a bath, as if he is an insect that must be eradicated.  In their odd and mysterious way, Tsai’s way of telling a story evokes empathy, where the children appear, for all practical purposes, normal and fairly happy, even living outdoors in a demolition zone, but it’s impossible not to have sympathy for what they’re going through, where it’s as if they’re surviving in a war zone.  On top of that, the parents have unresolved issues which are never discussed, but are everpresent, hanging over their heads like a cloud of gloom.  As in so many Tsai Ming-liang films, a torrent of rain is everpresent, where the characters continue to be drenched, only adding to their miseries.  Finally, there is an unmistakable resemblance to Weerasethakul’s SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (2006), arguably still his best film, as the interior space has a life all of its own, much of it feeling toxic or contaminated, like The Zone in Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), where the camera develops a relationship with a wall mural sitting alone in the ruins of a decaying and dilapidated building, where on two different occasions, characters are so mesmerized by what they see that time literally stops, as they temporarily become frozen objects unable to remove themselves from the environment.  In much the same way, Lee Kang-Sheng can’t shake his environment, continually living on the edge in a dire economic state, seemingly frozen in time, dehumanized, on the verge of losing his children, no longer able to feel any real semblance of life, giving the finale a lingering taste of apocalyptic doom.