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Filming Locally, Thinking Globally:

The Search for Roots in Contemporary Thai Cinema
by Kong Rithdee
t was an odyssey, a long, seafaring voyage grounded in something shared by a number Apicahtpongs 2002 film Blissfully Yours. through international oceans, islands of of Thai filmmakers of the past decade: a col- Not that these titles by mavericks and young worries, local uncertainty, the lure of lective subconscious, which attempted to auteurs represent the vast ovum of contemsirens, nostalgic soul-searching, Technicol- retrieve and redefine the identity of Siamese porary Thai cinema that has also spawned ored dreams, infernal nationalism, fists and cinema through both the lenses of local film trashy horror flicks, arm-flapping transsexuelbowsthrough fears and doubts and history and newfound influences of the al curios, repetitive action sagas, and chesthopes and optimism. In the opening decade globalized epoch, through the legacy of our thumping nationalist epicswell get to of the twenty-first century, Thai cinema hazy past and the pressing, tangible present. them later. But for those eight films (and traveled the Earth in search of itself. It has Shot to fame at an international arena like many more) that began traveling the world found, in a sense, what it once lost, and yet, Cannes, both films were actually an attempt since the last year of the 1990s, they put forth the image of Thai cinema as internawith the wobbly march of a rural ingnue set to find and bring Thai cinema home. tional observers perceive free in the global showus. In the process, they ground, the search blissSince the late Nineties, the ever-changing also represent the effort fully continues. cinema of Thailand has been undergoing to locate Thai cinema as When Apichatpong part of a shifting global Weerasethakul defied the a cultural identity crisis, which may very esthetic, as part of Asian Croisette odds, thanked well be its greatest strength. film culture, and, most all the ghosts, and teased importantly, as a fixture Tim Burton on that May Take a recent exhibit. The film series in the domestic consciousness that has been night he rose like the darkest horse to win the Palme dOr, the decade of insecurity Blissfully Thai, put together by the Asia groomed to regard movies as mere amuseseemed vindicated. The history of cinema Society in New York this past May-June,1 in ment that merits no cultural scrutiny. now embraced Thailand. Welcome to the which eight films made after 2000 were club, says the world, or at least the Western screened, including Uncle Boonmee and Rerooting world. Fittingly, it was on the same stage, Tears of the Black Tiger, captured that spirit Before directing Tears of the Black Tiger, Cannes, nine years prior, at the dawn of the and hinted at the running threads shared by Wisit Sasanatieng wrote the scripts for two new millennium, that a barnyard Siamese directors who are seemingly disparate in films that resuscitated the near flatline of his cowboy, half-drunk on eighty-proof moon- purpose and temperament. Also showing in homegrown cinema. For his friend Nonzee shine and manic possibilities, surged from that program were Pen-ek Ratanaruangs Nimibutr, in 1997 Wisit wrote the retro-fitobscurity to grab the world by its balls. In Monrak Transistor (2001) and Ploy (2007), ted Daeng Bireley and Young Gangsters, a 2001, Fah Talai Jone (Tears of the Black Mingmongkol Sonakuls Isan Special (2002), hoodlum escapade set in 1956; then in 1999 Tiger) announced the arrival of contempo- Yongyoot Thongkongtoons The Iron Ladies he rerooted the oldest Thai ghost yarn from rary Thai cinema and ambushed unsuspect- (2000), Aditya Assarats Hi-so (2010), and the mid-century and gave Nang Nak a nosing observers with its talgic push that enmad cocktail of nosdeared contemporary talgia and anachroviewers. It worked nism. That film by beyond their expectaWisit Sasanatieng set tionsDaeng Bireley up one half of the was a major hit, and parentheses that was Nang Nak shot to allcompleted by Apichtime-high box-office atpongs Loong Boonearnings (to be bromee Raluek Chat ken later) and spent (Uncle Boonmee Who years touring the fesCan Recall His Past tival circuit. The two Lives) in 2010. A lot films succeeded in happened between reconnecting the those two films, and audienceamong then beyond. them the new middle On the surface, the class who had for a two films hardly share while displayed a a trait, let alone a cindeep-seated mistrust ematic ideologyone for inane local prois a gleefully lurid ductionsto the pastiche, the other a visual adaptation of metaphysical ponderfamiliar narratives ing in sober hues. On and made cinema a closer look, howev- Wisit Sasanatiengs Tears of the Black Tiger, a mad cocktail of nostalgia and anachronism, matter again among er, both films are introduced world audiences to Thai cinema with a resounding bang in 2001. Thais.

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Apinya Sakuljaroensuk portrays the title character in Pen-ek Ratanaruangs Ploy (2007), a Thai take on The Seven Year Itch.

But while Nonzees image of vintage Thailand is a straightforward re-creation of lulling canals, lovelorn banshees, and the elegantly lost past, Wisits own plan of rerooting went far beyond postcard realism and into metacinematic exploits. Channeling his fetishistic passion for old Technicolored films, he went prepop and posteverything in his directorial debut that rocked Cannes yet tanked disastrously at home. Tears of the Black Tiger reaches back into the treasure trove of Siamese-cinema antics and flaunts its artificiality like a badge of honor. Its not an exhibition of nostalgia; it is a cosmology of Thai film history rebooted and retooled with a good mix of love, care, and lunacy. When that dementedly colorful film flopped at home yet thrilled (or bewildered) critics worldwide, earning selective releases in many territoriesthis was the early 2000s when Asian films were making an onslaught on the world stagethe long and giddy search for the identity, or identities, of contemporary Thai cinema, kick-started by the two Nonzee films Wisit previously wrote, became the silent discourse among upcoming Thai directors at the turn of the century. Apichatpong made his Mysterious Object At Noon in 2000, followed by Blissfully Yours in 2002. Both movies, especially the first, drew on the reservoir of old-fashioned storytelling tradition unique to Thai melodra-

maradio plays, rural performances, oral talesas well as the formalism of Western experimental filmmaking. The filmmakers fusion of Third-World surrealism, Siamese candor, and sci-fi/spiritual contemplation would later launch an ongoing debate on the meaning of Thainess in the globalized period when those themes reincarnated in different forms in his subsequent Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century, and Uncle Boonmee. At around the same time, Pen-ek Ratanaruang surveyed the wreckage of Thai genre films left smoldering after the gloom of the 1990s, and cooked up the cheerfully cynical Fun Bar Karaoke (1997) and 6ixtynin9 (1999). But it was Monrak Transistor, which was screened at the Directors Fortnight in 2002 and partly inspired by an old Thai musical film from the 1960s, that contributed to the collective search for our lost Eden. The New York-educated Pen-ek halfjoked on several occasions that with Monrak Transistor he was remaking Woody Allens Radio Days in upcountry Thailand. Sure, we got the joke: heres a very Thai narrative told with Thai wit (and beautiful Thai songs), yet it has this dash of style thats not quite culture-specific. The most startling thing about the film, which recounts the misfortune of a poor country singer, is that we cant pinpoint in which period the story is set; it

looks like now, but it might just as well be twenty or fifty years ago. This timelessness, this casual defiance of being detained by the exactness of history and moment, makes the film a precious memento of the pastlike the transistor radio in the titleand also a shining relic of the present. Later on, Pen-ek would take his local wit and Thai in-jokes on an international expedition in Last Life In the Universe (2004) and Invisible Waves (2006), both starring Japanese characters lost in the Thai labyrinths, before the filmmaker found the home-court advantage again in Ploy (2007) and Nymph (2009). He had branched out, but its the root that he has always been looking for. This search for roots is not a conscious labor to return to the established, or official, culturesuch effort belongs to the Thai Culture Ministry, a reliable source of laughter and bewilderment. Rather, its an expedition of young men and women whove rummaged through the old boxes in the corner of the attic to find whats still useful for their new ventures. And these boxes have yielded a disparate content. Aditya Assarat, a Thai who grew up in the U.S., is well known for his post-tsunami ode Wonderful Town (and his new, semiautobiographical Hi-So), but it was his two short films in the early 2000s that represented his homecoming rite. Motorcycle (2000) is set in
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erences of the locals. If we a poor rural villagean look at the eight films environment very remote shown at the Asia Society, from the directors city for instance, only The Iron lifeand the mournful narLadies made serious money. rative involves a farmer who Even Pen-eks Monrak receives the news of the Transistor, which carried a death of his son. In Waiting commercial flavor, was a (2003), Aditya tells the story disappointment at the of a country man who travBangkok box office. Uruels to the village of his old phongs Agrarian Utopia, lover. This near-literal despite support from the attempt to reconnect with local cultural agency, had to Thailandand not just wait over a year to get a Bangkokis also manifest release on one screen. Likein Isan Special, a 2002 film wise with Adityas Wonderabout an eventful bus trip to ful Town and Hi-So, all of the poor Northeast by Apitchatpongs films, as well Mingmongkol Sonakul, who as Anocha Suwichakornalso spent years studying pongs multiple award-winfilmmaking in the U.S. ning Mundane History Yet some filmmakers they exist on the periphery have never left home. Withof the mainstream moneyout having to make a detour making machine. across the continents, Pen-ek Ratanaruangs Monrak Transistor (2001) is a peculiar Trying to find the long Uruphong Raksasat seems blend of contemporary sensibility and stylized nostalgia. road home, those films to have carried his roots found the home padlocked around in his pocket, and (granted, the decade-long ignorance was his brand of pastoral cinema is a synthesis of Love Thy Nation family history and neoclassical penchant. While the films mentioned above went slightly improved after Apichatpongs big Uruphongs series of short films in the mid- around the world, the narrative at home car- win at Cannes last year). In general, the 2000s all took place in the bucolic farmland ried the whiff of a parallel universe. With the mainstream Thai film scene was enlivened of his northern hometown, culminating in international acknowledgement of Thai by the popularity of Nonzees Nang Nak, the startling Agrarian Utopia (2009), a non- filmmakers such as Apichatpong, Pen-ek, which proved that a Thai film could still fiction feature that distills the fifty years of Wisit, and Uruphong came another dis- court Thai audiences, and also by Yongyour failed economic development into two course, one that continues not so silently oots The Iron Ladies, which proved that a hours of the bliss and agony of the farming today. Following the flop of Tears of the blatantly commercial endeavor could pay off existence. Told through two families of rice Black Tiger and other auteur films of that handsomely. While the mavericks were busy growersrice, Uruphong reminds us, is the period, the complaint was that new Thai rerooting, the skillful workmen of the multiancient monument of Southeast Asian glory filmmakers were making movies for foreign plex venues found their own way to bring much taken for granted by Southeast Asians audiences and bypassing the taste and pref- Thai films into the local consciousness and to spin the wheel of themselvesthe the industry. In the film is bracketed by past decade, Thai noisy political promovies have exploittests that offer a bited recurring formuter critique of the las in slapstick comsociety without apedy starring TV pearing supercilious. comedians, ghost Movies about farmstories that rode on ers basically disapthe wave of Asian peared from Thai horror, and, with screens around the the arrival of Onglate 1970s; what Bak and Tony Jaa in Uruphong did, and 2001, a series of fistis still doing, is fightand-elbow action ing for a fair share of showcases that rely screen time for the on the sweaty exoticountrys most imcism of Thirdportant profession. World hard men. Of His farmers arent the more notable the stuff of nostalgia, names, directors and he dusted them such as Yuthlert Sipoff from the attic papak wired those not because theyre elements with a old, but because its touch of cynicism; almost a crime for Pakpoom Wongcontemporary Thai poom and Banjong cinema to have forPisanthanakul made gotten them for so Yongyoot Thongkongtoons The Iron Ladies, which portrays a volleyball team made up of gay and transvestite men, is an example of Thai filmmakers penchant for gender-bending movies. Thai horror films long.
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like Shutter that became global hits; Prachaya Pinkaew transformed cheap kickboxing flicks into lucrative exports; and Poj Anont, unheard of elsewhere, has built a cultlike following around his brand of gay comedy, trashy ghost yarns, and gay/ghost camp hybridity thats as uniquely Thai as Apichatpongs reincarnated monkey ghost. Sitting above all of this merry-go-round is something else entirely. The rerooting took on a literal approach and the reconnection with the (imagined?) glorious past received a nationalistic treatment in a series of historical epics. At times they seemed more than just movies; they were like national projects, funded largely by tax money. As of last year, the three highestgrossing Thai films of all time are historical epics made by Prince Chatrichalerm YukolSuriyothai in 2001, Legend of King Naresuan Part 1 and Part 2 in 2007, and, after a long delay, Part 3, which was released this April (Part 4 and 5 are coming soon!). Suriyothai came out the same year as Monrak Transistor and Tears of the Black Tiger, and a year after Mysterious Object at Noon. And while Pen-ek, Wisit, and Apichatpong seemed to be searching for the home of Thai cinema at a metaphysical or contextual level, Prince Chatrichalerm, a respected figure, straightened that idea out, mobilized a troop of war elephants around it, and plastered it with the gold leaves of

sixteenth-century palaces while the Burmese army, our perennial cinematic villain, stood watching (or smirking). While Uruphong sang the song of rice in Agrarian Utopia, the royal director erected a monument of official history populated by a kingly presence and dashing court warriors. Upon its release, Suriyothai was a phenomenon unseen before by Thai cinemagoers: it was huge in every respect, and, seriously, its record $17-million gross is unlikely to be broken in my lifetime. In the covert contest to define Thainess, this traditional interpretation easily won. Interestingly, however, while there was a clear attempt by the authorities to promote this image of Thai cinema at the international level, Suriyothai and the King Naresuan films were hardly seen outside the country. In 2001, after the film was released, Francis Ford Coppola, an old friend of Prince Chatricharlerm from their college years, came to Bangkok and reedited Suriyothai for a U.S. release. Still, these historical monuments seem understudied by critics in their discussion of New Thai Cinema, despite the fact that these expensivelymade quasipropaganda and official cultural artifacts occupy a prominent place in the local consciousness and reflect, to an extent, the political climate in Thailand during the past decade. Pairing Suriyothai with Monrak Transistor, or King Naresuan 1 and

2 with Agrarian Utopia or Ong-Bak, we can glimpse the inner dialog that courses through contemporary Siamese cinema, probably the same way that Tears of the Black Tiger and Uncle Boonmee constituted the parentheses and outlined the scope of Thai movies of the past ten years. Like the study of other national cinemas, the topography of Thailand and its cinematic representationesthetically, anthropologically, and politicallydoesnt yield a neatly-wrapped conclusion. The question of Thainess is as intriguing as it is futile, and as tempting as it is unnecessary, especially when filmmakers like Apichatpong, Pen-ek, and Uruphong are testing so many real and imaginary borders of cinema that transcend nationality, when theyre not making films just for Thai people, but for anybody who still cares about the possibility of cinema. Uncle Boonmee didnt mark the end of the odyssey, because the sirens are still calling, because more Naresuan movies are coming out, and because Tony Jaa is shooting a new asskicking blockbuster with the aim to conquer the world. Is the rerooting finished? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it never will be.
1 For further information on the Asia Society Blissful-

ly Thai film series, including videos of talks with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Mingmongkol Sonakul, and Pen-ek Ratanaruang, visit the Asia Society Website at http://asiasociety.org/blissfullythai.

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Author: Rithdee, Kong Title: Filming Locally, Thinking Globally: The Search for Roots in Contemporary Thai Cinema Source: Cineaste 36 no4 Fall 2011 p. 16-19 ISSN: 0009-7004 Publisher: Cineaste Publishers, Inc. Cineaste Magazine, 243 Fifth Avenue, Suite 706, New York, NY 10016

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