GRANDMA (2014, Kasiti Sangkul, A+30)
You can watch this film here:
GRANDMA makes me think about the following things:
1.I want to screen this film together with the films of Rouzbeh
Rashidi, Taiki Sakpisit, and Tanatchai Bandasak, because I like the haunting
atmosphere and the poetic quality in GRANDMA very much. It reminds me of some
of the films made by Rashidi, Taiki, and Tanatchai, such as ZOETROPE (2011,
Rouzbeh Rashidi), I DID NOT DREAM LAST NIGHT (2008,Taiki Sakpisit), and ENDLESS
RHYME (2008, Tanatchai Bandasak). These films are very haunting and poetic,
too.
GRANDMA also reminds me of
some of their films because the haunting and poetic aspects of GRANDMA are made
from “documentary-like” footage, not from “weird fictional world” like in the
films of David Lynch.
2.I particularly like the first five minutes of GRANDMA very much, or
the scenes before we see people attending the funeral, because the first half
of the film makes me feel “wonderfully disorientated”. During these first five
minutes, I feel a little bit lost, but in a good way. In the first five minutes
of this film, we see scenes which are not obviously connected to one another. I
didn’t know at first how these scenes are connected, what they would lead to,
what I would see next, what the film would tell us or show us. I was not sure
about the time, the space, the identity of the people in the film, the meaning
of what I saw, the reasons why these scenes were edited like this, etc.
I like this kind of feelings very much. I call it the feeling of “disorientation”,
but I’m not sure if I use the right English word. Hahaha. The first half of
GRANDMA pleases me very much, because it makes me feel wonderfully
disorientated like PHENOMENON (2012, Teeranit Siangsanoh), SWEETHEART GARDEN
(2009, Tanatchai Bandasak), or TAKE THE 5:10 TO DREAMLAND (1976, Bruce Conner).
All these films show us scenes which are not obviously connected to one
another, and all of them make me feel sublime and great in an unexplainable
way.
However, the excitement was decreased a little bit in the second
half of GRANDMA. In the second half, we observe people who attend a funeral. I
began to understand what the film is all about. I didn’t feel lost about the
time, the space, and the identity of the people in the film any more. I began
to understand the scenes in the first half. The feeling of “wonderful
disorientation” is gone.
I still like the second half of GRANDMA very much. I think it is
very good, though it is not as exciting as the first half of the film. I like
to observe people’s faces, behaviours, and gestures in the second half. In
conclusion, what I like in the first half of the film is how the filmmaker
poetically edited all the scenes together. What I like in the second half of
the film is how the filmmaker observes human beings.
3.I really really like the last scene of the film, though I’m not
sure why. It touches me in an unexplainable way. It also unintentionally
reminds me of the feelings I have when I saw some films by Apichatpong
Weerasethakul and Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa. There are some simple scenes of nature
included in the films of Apichatpong and Wiwat, but these deceptively simple
scenes somehow make me feel very sublime.
I don’t know the meaning of the last scene of GRANDMA. Does the
filmmaker want to say something about his grandma or about life in general? I
don’t know. But the last scene unintentionally makes me think about my own poor
life. In the last scene, we see a cow or an ox or a buffalo enjoying eating
some grass near a small quiet river, and we also hear a Thai folk song. But
what is important for me is that this animal is tied by a rope. The animal
seems to enjoy its own simple life, but it is not free. It cannot go very far.
That’s why the last scene unintentionally makes me think about my own poor life.
I want to go abroad to attend many film festvals, etc. But I am too poor to do
that. So what I can do is trying as best as I can to enjoy my simple life here
in Bangkok. Maybe life is always like this—it can be happy in a way, but it
will never be perfect. Happiness and unhappiness exist in the same moment, like
eating grass in a wonderful atmosphere while still being tied by a rope.
Kasiti Sangkul also directed A POSTERIORI (2012, A+30).
No comments:
Post a Comment