Dir: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004, Thailand/France/Germany/Italy, 118 mims
Cast: Banlop Lomnoi, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Sirivech Jareonchon
While attracting acclaim in some quarters (including taking home the prestigious Jury Prize), Apichatpong Weerasethakul's third feature also prompted many viewers to walk out when screened in Cannes last year. It isn't difficult to see why; this film tests all boundaries of human endurance. Correction - the second half of the film tests all boundaries of human endurance. For this is a film firmly split down the middle, right down to incorporating a separate title sequence at the halfway mark. Yet for those who do manage to make it to the end the film it does have a strange, hypnotic quality that makes it difficult to forget in a hurry.
The film is essentially a love story revolving around Keng, a soldier posted to the jungles of North-East Thailand, and a country boy named Tong. From the night they meet the two find they share an instant connection as they aimlessly hang about the surrounding towns and countryside. Then, suddenly, the film shifts into very different territory. Overlapping with the same central characters and themes but with a very different approach, it sees Tong mysteriously disappear and Keng venturing deep into the jungle to find a mythical tiger that has been slaughtering the community's cattle.
The first half of Tropical Malady, while slow, is actually a reasonably interesting story with several affecting scenes, particularly a strangely tense encounter where a local woman guides the pair into a maze of airless cave systems. Yet while the performances from the two leads are convincing, they never really become involved due to Weerasethaul's insistence on keeping the characters at such a distance. Dialogue is spartan, the pair reveal little about their lives and nothing really happens to them. No doubt this is because Weerasethakul is aiming to depict their relationship on a more abstract, spiritual level (that overlaps into the second part); but for a movie that sees love as something tied up with the realms of the senses - of sound, vision and touch - it crucially fails to engage the heart along the way.
The slip into the realm of folklore and myth at the halfway point initially promises to be an odd, fascinating change of approach. We, like Keng, penetrate deep into the unknown where nature and the spirit world are interlinked and rules of the outside world do not apply. The idea is certainly bold - a shift not only of narrative, but almost away from narrative, into a sensory form of filmmaking with a different rhythm from conventional cinema. But after the fortieth minute of watching, leaves slowly rustle in the wind in virtual darkness (with the occasional portentous line of dialogue), even the most patient viewers are likely to be twisting uncomfortably in their seats. Weerasethakul seems to makes his point about love transcending worlds and then proceeds to almost wilfully drag it out as long as he possibly can; rest assured, this is the very definition of the term "challenging cinema".
Aided by stunning cinematography, Tropical Malady does manage to engender a sense of the mystical aura of the jungle, particularly effective on a huge cinema screen where the unique, sensory overload bears down on the viewer from all sides. But you half suspect that if you ventured into the jungle and left a camera running for about an hour you could create a similar effect yourself. In this respect it feels a bit like Andy Warhol's Empire - a continuous 8-hour take filming the Empire State Building . And while Empire may have been bold, experimental filmmaking did anyone actually make it through the whole movie?
Matt McAllister
|
