So, The Forbidden Door.
Pretty riddled with cliches you’d find on most shot-on-digital, lower-budget, horror/psychological thriller type films. The struggling artist kind of thing with real bodies inside of sculptures reminds of Bucket of Blood and Wax Museum. A secret club where people watch some kind of hidden illicet hidden videos seems like it was culled from a thousand different films. The guy gets his revenge in a really straightforward way. And then of course the final cliches, two of the characters were the same person and it ended up being all inside the protagonists head.
Village People Radio Show
This is a very fascinating documentary, both in terms of content and method. I’m generally not very fond of documentaries which have a lot of people talking in front of a camera, and Village People has a fair bit of it, but while we listen to these old folk, the camera wanders around, absorbing the gorgeous sights and quaint rhythms of the Thai countryside. This is an inspired strategy to me, because it facilitates a very effective overlapping of the mundane with the historical, the personal with the political. As just one example, a scene where one of the communists talks, in a very matter-of-fact tone, about having killed people while another man with no hands pours tea is deceptively powerful. I’m less sure of what to make of the occasional interludes where A Winter’s Tale is narrated over the radio, but it somehow seemed to add to the movie’s charm. Besides, I just came across this article which makes some very interesting observations about this aspect of the film, and also about the film as a whole.
As much as it seems like a stretch, it’s an interesting proposition that the nation (the newborn child of the play) is the product of several forces, including the people (the queen), and communist forces (the “friend” of the king, who quickly becomes the “enemy”). A paranoid king (the government) of course, rejects both queen and child (the people and the nation forged by forces other than itself). Both devices lend the film the same whimsical tone of its predecessor, The Last Communist, but tone aside, they constitute an important factor for why the film works: in summation, they suggest that history is partial and life is a hybrid of tragedy and comedy. — criticine.com
Cockfight! Cockfight! Any film that has a cockfight automatically gets my vote.
The white noise effect was pretty irritating and unnecessary though. It also took me some time to realize that this film was shot in Thailand and not Malaya.
The white noise effect was pretty irritating and unnecessary though
It also took me some time to realize that this film was shot in Thailand and not Malaya.
That’s your fault, not the film’s. My fault, too, as I also didn’t realize this until I stopped halfway through to read an article about it.
Nah..I believe that a film must be comprehensible without having to read anything prior to watching it. After watching, I am ready to read articles that can increase my appreciation for the film.
Nah..I believe that a film must be comprehensible without having to read anything prior to watching it.
No, it’s not the filmmaker’s responsibility to dumb down his film to what you can understand in Mumbai. Just as it’s not his responsibility to dumb down his film to what I can understand in Texas. If these were Salvadorian guerrillas speaking from Texas, I would have realized it immediately because it’s what I know. But these were Malaysian guerrillas in Thailand, and so I knew nothing.
Hmm. the question of how much information should be required to understand a movie is an interesting one as it goes towards the idea of movies as a universal language, which is often assumed but needn’t be accepted. Given most films are best understood from the perspective of the culture from which the film comes from, the suggestion that there is some amount of research which can provide an adequate basis for “getting” the movie to anywhere near the same degree as a native of the culture is problematic. Such an attitude, I think, tends to better favor those informed by a certain set of “liberal” or artistic values which are uncommon everywhere in the world. I strongly suspect that many of the best loved “foreign” films do not speak to residents of the culture from which they came in the same way that they will to those who have invested energy in artistic appreciation in general. In fact, I believe it is often easier to appreciate movies from outside ones own culture, or to accept things said in subtitles that might fall hard on the ear if spoken in one’s own language.
At the same time, there is no question that someone who lives in a culture will have a different understanding of the references made by a movie created by someone from the same or similar culture, and this is even more true when the film is set within the society which one is most familiar. In this sense, the more one can inform themselves about the situation, history, or society being shown, the better of a grasp one will have on the references. Still though, it is a very different thing to have read up on say the history of Thailand and to have grown up or even simply lived there for any length of time. Looking at Thailand from the privileged perspective of someone who grew up in the US, for example, is to apply a very different set of expectations, values, and historical expectation than would possibly be the case for a native of Thailand.
This all raises a number of questions which cannot be easily answered, if answered at all. One of the most significant being that an assumption about who the film is for is implicitly being made. One might either see a movie as addressing a specific audience or a universal one. If the former, then wondering who might make up that audience becomes an issue which has larger implications and can’t easily be declared moot. If, instead, it is the latter, then the question would be how the film addresses the issues at hand for audiences who aren’t going to be as informed about specifics and who will not necessarily share underlying values regarding the ideas in play.
There is, of course, another option which might possibly seem more attractive, one which comes from aesthetic theory rather than political or social theory, and that is that the artwork, if successful, will speak to us regardless of background based on its aesthetic values, not its political ones. From this perspective, the notion that an artwork need say something absolute and clearly distinct becomes, at best, a secondary value, and, to some, an almost or complete negation of the qualities necessary for great art as art, by its very nature in this view, does not provide answers, it creates unresolvable tensions. This latter idea is a difficult one as I think most of us have some deeply held beliefs which act as a sort of circuit breaker when viewing an artwork. That is to say that when some ethical or moral perspective is seen to be embraced, the circuit breaker trips and we can no longer appreciate the work from a disinterested perspective. This will also work against the idea of a universal language for movies to some degree, and goes quite a ways towards explaining why there can be no agreement on a set of great films by even the most devoted viewers who would seem to come from the same background and who seem to otherwise share similar beliefs.
We will always bring our singular experiences to bear when viewing, and no research can erase that, in fact the act of researching itself helps to further exemplify the divide as it in itself suggests a set of beliefs which can’t be entirely disregarded, just as believing that one can adopt a wholly disinterested stance and judge a movie purely on aesthetic values has a set of demands of its own. One can say that a a great film will overcome these difficulties and speak in one way to the outsider or the ignorant and in another way to the native or the informed, and in some sense this can be seen as true, but in another, it is simply a different value one might use or claim when judging or valuing a film, as one would have to assume the truth of one or the other half of the equation without being able to experience it yourself. The best one can hope for then is for the movie to simply find its audience and for each person to appreciate it as they feel they must. If enough people do, then the movie will find some larger spot in whatever culture those that appreciate it best belong to, and if it has a diverse appeal, then it will be considered “of value” in a larger variety of sub-cultures or groups and its importance will be magnified.
The TL:DR version is simply there is no right way to watch a movie, there is only the way that fits the viewer’s interests and beliefs.
I agree with you completely Greg. Wonderful summation and exploration. I kept thinking I wanted to comment on certain things you said only to continue to find you made the comments I would have made in your very next paragraph. So I’ll go back to your first sentence and refer to “the question of how much information should be required to understand a movie is an interesting one as it goes towards the idea of movies as a universal language” and instead also mention that the point should not always be to figure out who much information is required to understand a movie, but to rather view the movie itself as information itself to be used in our understanding of the world.
There is no question of dumbing down the film. I liked the movie. All I expect from the film maker was to give an idea of where the film is taking place at the beginning since half the time there are people speaking about their exploits in another country. It is not unnatural for me to assume that these are local people of that same country especially with the way the film goes about showing the local landscape and people with a lot of fondness and nostalgia. Even the war efforts of the elders are described as if they happened in the same locale with all the bunkers in the forest. I agree with Greg that it is probably a different target audience though I can’t imagine anyone outside that community(even in Thailand) being able to guess that the film was being shot there.
Also, I believe that apart from the target audience, the amount of information that needs to provided depends a lot on the nature of the film itself. A documentary like The Night it Rained does not require any information about where its happening because its universal in its approach. On the other hand a film that is providing a lot of historical information(like this one) is expected to be more informative in other aspects as well. I can appreciate the aesthetics of the film only to the extent the film maker wants me to appreciate them.
you guys are nuts. do you watch so differently to me? i came away from village people quite aware that they were in thailand…a story was being told, a particular history being recounted…and you found out they were in thailand when the story got to them being in thailand.
as for information and cultural appreciation…well i think the film addresses that a little – it’s about exile and history and how we tell it….no one in malaysia in general really understands these people (the film got banned there) and no one in thailand will so much because it is their grudging adopter…
and the best bits(!!!!)…(apart from the funny shots illustrating historical tale told with visual present)…the white noise, the radio play, feed into this and inform it – a distancing device to comment on how tales become myths to be consumed, and how everything cannot be said, that there are other channels on the popular radio that we can’t be listening to when we’re only listening to a particular station, that there are these caesurae even within individual histories…
it’s those bits that raise this for me from being just another doc….it questions itself, without questioning its sympathy towards its subjects… if anyone didn’t read that article vikram linked to:
There are at least two devices that Amir turns to in this film to underline the contingent nature of these recollections, without undermining their worth. One – somewhat akin to the aesthetic mood and aura of his 2005 experimental film, Tokyo Magic Hour – is the sudden flashes of blue-white light that intermittently interrupt an interviewee’s recollections or in some cases, simply leave these testimonials unfinished. If these visual “electric shocks” (aurally, that is precisely what it resembles) are anything like their predecessor in Tokyo Magic Hour, they hint at what cannot be said, what was not said, or what constitutes a kind of blip or lapse in memory: in the case of his experimental film, the unspeakable is in the realm of the heart and touches on love. In the case of Village People Radio Show, we are in the realm of political choices, nationalist sentiments and colonialism. Either way, all confessions are coloured by the unsaid.
Amir may not have delved into Greek etymology to shape his modus operandi, and neither have I in thinking about his film, but the one thing I do recall learning about is the term aletheia. It means “truthfulness” and yet, within the word is another, lethe, which means “forgetfulness” or “concealment”. That the two are so inextricably bound says something about how much more that word captures the essence of things than standard ideas of “confession” and “testimony”. These flashes, therefore, are very much a feature of the documentary, rather than an appendage or afterthought to round off the filmmaker’s approach to the subject of history (personal or otherwise).
damn i missed the edit window
and it’s not like i want to go too grand, but it’s as if the film is making an argument about content and form through content and form….film as ‘pure’ documentary, film as struggle, film as search for ‘truth’ beyond its images…is film in exile…
can i just skip over the boring ones? :\
^none of them are boring Ruby. You must check them all out. Its a lovely mix of interesting films.
Watched Egg today. I didn’t think I would be doing so via my youtube upload!!! but as it happened that was all I had left. My entire hard drive keeled over three days ago, about a TB of data gone , one of those “I never thought it would happen to me” experiences. If this has ever happened to you, you will know the pain and no doubt now make sure you back up all your data (as the computer guy told me, to DVD being the only really safe way). If it has never happened to you well it can just like that in a matter of minutes so don’t be a slacker like me – back up your stuff.
Anyway after I came to terms with collecting my computer from the repair shop with its new completely empty hard drive, it started to feel somehow good, a loss followed by feeling lighter, a new beginning – which is how Yusef was at the end of Egg. I quite enjoyed the film, there was nothing remarkable in the narrative, we’ve seen it played out over and again – character is presented, something significant happens, character goes through a transition and disconnects from/reconnects (or connects for the first time) to parts of self and so on. It resonated with me as I come from a small rural environment and have had to go back there for similar kinds of reasons necessitating the distanced self to merge with roots, family, the past etc. and it has always been a time or reckoning, an emotional affecting experience.
It would be good to see the other two in the trilogy retracing the story of Yusef to his boyhood. I like the director’s approach, subtleties quietly observed. I wondered if he was a vegetarian?!? He seems to be asking us to join Yusef in being traumatised by –and mindful of – the slaughter and butchering of the ram. It wasn’t until I sat contemplating the awful brutal transition of living creature fearful and sensate to dishes of inert flesh awaiting the pot that I recalled the book the young woman chose in Yusef’s book shop at the beginning, a very large and obvious vegetarian cookbook. I particularly noticed the book because remarkably someone gave me that exact book a few years ago for Christmas and I know it intimately. At the end of Egg I wanted to be sitting at a little table with someone eating bread and cheese and honey and drinking black tea with a thunderstorm brewing outside which tells me the content and atmosphere of the film was organically absorbed in the viewing. I like that.
Tropical Fish. What a zany piece of misadventure this was. It had at its core something profound and the ending made me cry but it didn’t really know what it wanted to be and felt overly stuffed with so much try hard humour …though I did laugh. Very deliberate mocking of the frantic preoccupation with education in that culture. Gorgeous colours! And some very peaceful little interludes here and there too.
Lust for Gold – I liked the plaintive signing, it complemented the film beautifully but I was pretty much “is it over yet” during this one liking the first half much better than the second.
The Forbidden Door – whatevs. Pretty much what Riss said. I gotta go to sleep now I’m bushed. What a week.
La nación clandestina : Can anyone elucidate the ending of this film? I just hope that the ending wasn’t a gimmick because the rest of it was pretty captivating.
can i just skip over the boring ones?
It’s up to you, but you do need to watch both films in a match to vote.
Is no one making introductory topics for their films? I think it would be great to see the reasons people chose these films and would like to make one myself.
I’ve been urging everyone to do so, but no one has yet. I have been planning on doing one for Happy End but haven’t got around to it yet. I was hoping to have it up later today.
I agree with Rock and Bull. We need individual threads on films to understand the view point of the submitter as well as to increase our appreciation for the film. I especially find it important for experimental works like Piplottis Mistakes where I am at a total loss at making any sense of the visuals.
It’d be very fitting, considering the “suspenseful” nature of the Cup, if the film intro threads show up about five minutes before the respective matches begin.
La Vendedora de rosas
Proof that Pedro Costa is to drug use what designer jeans are to ass.
I posted an introductory thread for “Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, but forgot to put it in the World Cup section.
Ooopsies. I’ll see if someone can move it.
You know what would have really made The Circus Tent amazing? If, when hitting this scene around the halfway point…
…Aravindan never went back to the circus! He could have just filmed this father and daughter in their wonderfully 60s psychedelic-designed bourgeois living room for the next hour. They could have talked about life and boyfriends and why she can’t wear contact lens.
I’m very interested in Aravindan now, even if this film did little for me.
Ah, maybe you’re thinking Bunuel and the Bourgeoisie- i agree that would have had exciting possibilities. But i loved the film anyway
I was underwhelmed with Wiseman’s Public Housing film. I think the bureaucratic aspects covered at some length bogged me down a bit, the street scenes in between came as some relief. I think i have claustrophobic tendencies and a certain need for escapism, especially from social work/welfare type situations. Really i must up sticks and be on the road to India
The Clay Bird.
Getting back to that conversation about how much info is needed to enjoy a film, I was appreciateive that the Region 1 DVD I watched of this film featured some text before the film briefly describing the historical context.
My first impression after watching it was that it was a good view into a certain culture, time, and place. Maybe there wasn’t anything exceptional about the storytelling though. I’m rumingating on it a bit more and appreciating it a bit more though.
Some interesting stuff on the special features of the DVD. Kuxa had mentioned not knowing the filmmaker’s impression of Islam. Well apparently he is a practicing Islam. You can see he has an affinity for true Islam though, not an Islam that is used by people and governments as method for manipulating politics. You can see his most adored character is that of Ibrahim who provides this kind of muslim character.
The storytelling music is pretty remarkeable too. I appreciated how long he let a lot of these musical performances go on, only to realize later after hearing the interviews on the special features that he was actually cutting these performances short. WAY SHORT. Apparently these people often sing all night long, night after night for weeks. And thousands of people come to watch. That’s some endurance!
I just got through The Clay Bird too. It had an awful lot of plot strands and only loosely bound them together – trying to replicate the way life is, I suppose, but stylistically it didn’t really mesh with that approach. On the other hand, there was something very truthful about the characters, and the way the unrest felt so distant and academic until it was literally right on their front door felt quite incisive, especially if the film is meant to be filtered through a child’s eyes (or the eyes of childlike adults, perhaps?).