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ctiptonk
Reviews
Rak haeng Siam (2007)
Imperfect, but a definite must-see, and with lessons for Western audiences...
The first half of the film is so awkward, I couldn't stop complaining about it. But those innocent, beautiful, babyfaced kids—they're so damn cute. Watching them is mesmerizing even when everything else around them is not. And somewhere in the middle of the film, I shut up. Was it the moment in bed where Mew finally reaches out to comfort a grieving Tong? Was it June's charismatically bungled prayer at the dinner table? Or maybe it was the kiss: a lean-forward moment of such pure electricity, audacity and tenderness that my face could barely contain my ear-to-ear grin. What an accomplishment for two actors who claim in interviews to be both straight and less than enamored with each other. The second half of the film feels like it was shot by a different DP (I checked, it mysteriously was not), it feels like the production values went from 10-o'clock news to Hollywood Blockbuster. Suddenly the supporting actors snap into line, even Ying's straight-girl-crush-on-a-gay-boy routine gets more charming. I wish someone would turn my shoes upside down.
The tension builds as mom cages the boys' fledgling romance. Ah, how classic is this trope in Western Gay Cinema: the religious and misguided parental figure shuts out the only light on the path of their offspring's coming of age, only to see them spiral into a self destructive abyss, rescued at the last moment when Parental Units realize the error of their ways and relent, and true love wins, as it always does. The cast shines its brightest here, especially the two boys, whose teenage angst on screen plays with a smoldering, riveting sincerity.
The moment comes when Mom and Tong are decorating the Christmas tree. Tong presses her for whether to hang a male or a female ornament. Ooooh, how the shivers ran down my writing-workshop weary spine: this is some amazing writing. Show, don't tell is the maxim of every screen writing professor, and here is an incredibly clever, subtle way to handle the confrontation without any of the clumsy on-the-nose dialog that nearly every other gay film uses in the same predictable situation. She tells Tong to make the decision for himself. He hangs the male. I bestow ye, Charming 2007 Metaphor of the Year.
I am completely swept up in the moment, and suddenly:
"I can't be your boyfriend, but that doesn't mean I don't love you." As one IMDb poster indignantly points out, "they don't even hug!"
What. The. F***. Immediately, I am furious. The fury lasts about 2.5 seconds. Then the questions come: Have I been conditioned by Hollywood to expect only happy endings?
No, I've narrowed my reaction to the ending down to two causes: cross-cultural understanding, and questionable writing. As an American, I was brought up to believe that rebelling against parents is normal, even necessary. For many of us, coming out is an act of defiance. We leave home, strike out on our own, and parents can take us or leave us for who we really are. But at the end of the day, it's being true to yourself above all others' objections that's what matters to the American Gay: we're here, we're queer, get used to it. Our obligations to our parents more or less end at high school or college graduation. I cannot speak for Thai family values, but I hear that Thai society is rather conservative. Just compare previous depictions of gay characters in Thai films—the young, masculine boys of Love of Siam are a far, far cry from the transgendered title character of Beautiful Boxer or the effeminate queens of Iron Ladies. Not to say these communities don't deserve empowering screen time in their own right, but to grasp that there is a spectrum of gayness which exists separate from gender identity seems to be a novelty to Thai popular culture. Furthermore, Asian cultures in general consider respect for family to run deep, deeper even perhaps than all the Christian trappings the film clothes its characters in. Sakveerakul goes to great lengths to establish the storyline of the family tragedy so that by the end of the film, Tong's half-rejection, ostensibly to respect his mother's wishes, makes sense.
To my personal sensibilities, this seems reactionary. One of the reasons this film has lodged itself in my psyche despite its many and obvious flaws, and has me up writing at 5 AM, is that it saddens me to think both that millions of LGBT people cannot live the life they choose, and that even the ones who can may never win the approval of their families. Though I live as an open and out gay man, supported by my community, my family and my friends, I know my mother will never accept me one-hundred percent. Given the same choice, I don't think I would have had Tong's strength to uphold the unselfish piety which his culture values.
My final observation on the ending is that it comes with little to prepare us, both for Tong's semi-rejection and for Mew's sudden recovery from the depths of teen depression. On Mew's end, we are meant to believe that a visit from a friend who reminds him that he has had support all along is enough to get him back in the studio. This is the friend who the character has spent the film angry at, and now he's the best friend? As for Tong, we know of his family's dire situation, but Sakveerakul has spent the last hour-plus of screen time showing us how miserable they and all the people around them have become because of their separation. How can there be a satisfying resolution for anyone involved if the two aren't together?
Then again, maybe that's the point. Or, as fans have wishfully pointed out, maybe that's the lead in for Love of Siam 2.
Across the Universe (2007)
The Best Musical of 2007, Best War Film of 2007, but not without its quirks...
Let me begin by saying that this film is brave, timely and poignant and I love it to pieces. However, I concur with the other reviewers who have had slightly mixed feelings. The key to producing good musicals, especially now that the art form's pinnacle of popularity in the golden studio era of the 50s is an entire half-century past, is to maintain the audience's suspension of disbelief. In that respect, Across the Universe is exceedingly clever, transitioning with choreographed precision between what one might call diagetic and nondiagetic moments- "real" scenes and dance numbers. For example, football players careening and colliding in front and behind the protagonist of the moment gracefully transpose into dancers, flipping and tumbling yet still retaining a style of movement consistent with the football theme.
The visual style of the film echos the innocence of Hairspray in earlier moments, and the colorful melodrama of Moulin Rouge in its representation of the Beatles' later more political work, as the politics of the film begin to cement. Smart editing in the opening sequence creates graphic matches, carefully balancing newspapers atop crashing waves. An army boot camp montage splits individual body parts into separate boxes, suggesting the dehumanization by fragmentation (Full Metal Jacket?) that takes place to create soldiers. Strawberries are grenades, bombs, bloody masses sacrificed to the war on terror --strike that-- the war against Communism. Yet in some scenes, all the visual trickery loses its place, and doesn't quite live up to our expectations of sensory overload the circus scene somehow seems too thin and too out of context for its own intentions.
The film contains some of the most innovative set, lighting and costume designs I've ever seen- Max's abduction into the military comes to mind. Floors slide unexpectedly, hospital beds flip with Busby Berkeley precision. Soldiers march over a scale-model of Vietnamese jungle carrying a heavy Statue of Liberty. Many pieces surpass Dream Girls in their ambition and pure bravado. The budget, clearly many multiples larger than Hairspray's, lends itself well to the rendition of the Beatles' music, and the action is indeed impeccably matched to the visuals and emotional pitch of the plot. There's even some surprising re-casting of songs to suggest alternates to literal readings, ie "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" about loneliness.
But there are exceptions- the bowling alley scene falls particularly flat, as does an elating but contrived vision of "Dear Prudence" (could that effect be any more cliché?). The plot also occasionally hits a rough patch, failing to sufficiently motivate Jude's animosity towards Lucy, and skipping awkwardly around the issues surrounding Prudence (is she Vietnamese? Were the filmmakers timid about offending the audience by exploring her sexuality in a less roundabout, under-the-radar kind of way?) and Jude's father. The emotional weight of the film takes longer to develop than it should, leaving audiences to spend the first 20 minutes wondering if they'll care about the characters or not.
Despite these quirks, Across the Universe is the kind of film I have been waiting with bated breath for a brave filmmaker to take on. Its characters are not literally the Beatles or Janis Joplin, nor the actual characters described in the Beatles' music, they are in effect *metacharacters*- stand ins for ideas, people who embody the ethos of a generation, and by proxy, a suggestion on the direction of our own. The film repoliticizes and recontexualizes the Beatles' music for a new generation, allowing us to understand both the original context of the work, and its pointed applicability now. Comparable to Apocalypse Now in its timely, subtle and yet provocative objection to a war without end, Across The Universe asks a new generation to take up the struggle passed to it by their spiritual predecessors. It is a brave and elegant statement, despite its quirks and oversights, well deserving of a wide and receptive audience.
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Forget the movie, read the book.
** contains spoilers **
I was severely disappointed in Ron Howard's ho-hum interpretation of the excellent novel. I was hoping that the initial reviews had been wrong, and I would at least enjoy seeing all the puzzles visually presented, but I was let down. Then again, I can't really say I was expecting much, as I had assumed that it would be terrifyingly difficult to creatively transpose the lengthy passages of historical background and character development neatly into cinematic form. Oh, they did try for 2.5 hours but somehow even with the long run time, I never sympathized with the characters as I did with the novel. Furthermore, the length made a mess of the pacing, which occasionally lurched forward whenever Silas appeared (people in the audience even screamed) and then slogged for so long it was easy to forget the protagonists were running for their lives. I always had the sense in the book that danger was just around the corner, but the film version completely misses this suspense.
Tom Hanks, bless his heart, plays a truly realistic university professor... but the "I'm a nerdy guy just caught up in things I don't understand" shtick is completely wrong and overplayed for this context. Audrey makes a lovely Sophie, but much of her charm seems to have been dialogue- and accent- coached away. The character development is further short-circuited by Howard's decision to use odd semi-flashback scenes which reduce the rich stories of these characters to a few CG'd up flashes. One hideous example of poor directing choices comes when Remy is talking with the Teacher and we're not supposed to know the identity of the Teacher- this is easy to handle in literature, and admittedly difficult to render in cinema, but the sheer awkwardness of the camera movements and the gross transparency of the intentionally one-sided duologue is a missed opportunity for innovation.
Speaking of missed opportunities, let's talk about the art design... could the set of the final revelation have been any worse? A secret latch under a rug in the shape of a painfully obvious symbol? Come on! This completely misses the clever ingenuity of Dan Brown's puzzles. Although exhaustive time is spent on exposition, little is spent on the actual puzzle solving, making each revelation seem inevitable and contrived instead of suspenseful and intellectually exciting. If the medium had been leveraged more effectively, Howard could have given us a much better visual representation of the symbols in the text, but again, the opportunity is wasted, especially in the scene in which Teabing (sic) explains the meaning of the grail. Where was all the CG wizardry here? Even the painting represented on the big LCD screen is so grainy and washed out it loses the purpose of writing a story that utilizes the weight and genius of DaVinci's art.
With such dramatic locations, I don't see how this was screwed up so badly. Perhaps it was because I was stuck sitting waaay up front, but I noticed a *lot* of out of focus shots, and it wasn't just the projector, because the next shot would be fine. Someone needs to wake up the focus puller and get them to do their job!
**bad spoiler!!!**
The worst part about the film adaptation is the dumbing down of the material to make it less controversial. In the book, Sophie has a falling out with her grandfather because she sees him in a sexual ritual. In the movie, this is ever-so-briefly hinted at. This is a major omission because a) it motivates most of Sophie's actions and is a source of tension until the trust is formed between her and Langdon b) it contains one of the book's most accurate and damning jabs at misogynistic church doctrine. This was done almost certainly to ensure the film would get a PG-13 and not an R rating... opting for studio bottom line over artistic expression. Finally, I hardly see the justification of all the protests etc... when the film ends on such a dogmatic, pro-Christian note. Hanks' last lines were so horribly forced and so Hollywood "you thought this was going to be controversial? Just kidding! We were on the side of hegemony all along!"
Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964)
Starts off great, but...
This film begins wonderfully, brilliantly shot and keenly acted- but right as you're sure it's coming to a close, the music suddenly runs uptempo and the narrator says the equivalent of "Wait, there's more!" and the second segment of the film destroys any credibility the first might have established. The director's portrayal of the desert's harshness lends logically to the lunacy of the characters- but Rosa's actions in the second half seem completely unmotivated, as if the actors ran out of script and just start making things up out of boredom in front of the camera. Laudable attempts at Eisenstein-style multiple-repeat editing are a good idea but using them to cover the low-budget nature of the action scenes is not. Overall worth seeing, but I must warn you that I fell asleep towards the end.