The only thing that the director Anocha Suwichakornpong, who attended this screening, wanted to say to the audience before the film was to maybe not try to make all the pieces fit together, as many people had found the attempt frustrating. Not that her injunction was likely to stop anyone from making the attempt, but certainly going with the flow and attempting to absorb the piece more as a whole, by internalising and intuiting its poetic logic rather than seeking to 'understand' it analytically, was the more rewarding way to engage with what turned out to be a quite visually beautiful, thoughtfully spiritual and interestingly elusive account of historical (1976) and contemporary Thai society as well as the impossibilities of historical and personal-memorial representation, with all kinds of little cul de sacs, reverie-interludes and multi-dimensional layers and ellipses. If perhaps too cryptic for easy summary, it nonetheless satisfied.
(w/ trang)
(w/ trang)
