ความคิดเห็นที่ 3
อันนี้จาก เว็บมูลนิธิหนังไทย
Pen-ek Ratanaruang is fast becoming the Thai filmmaker with the biggest global profile. His third film, Monrak Transistor, a warm comedy about an aspiring singer, caused quite a splash at film festivals and found distribution in several overseas countries. Pen-eks follow-up, Last Life in the Universe, is in marked contrast to its predecessor: a slower, quieter, bleaker, more cryptic film. In fact, Pen-ek admits to taking as his starting point the idea of making a film completely without jokes as a way of examining how audiences might respond to his work with the most obvious and familiar response denied to them. The film tells the story of Kenji, a suicidal Japanese man working in a library in Bangkok. After several failed, aborted or interrupted suicide attempts, Kenji resolves to throw himself off a bridge. Just as he is about to jump, he is distracted by a young woman he recognises from the library. The woman, Nid, is hit by a car and killed. The tragedy brings Kenji into contact with Nids sister, Noi, who reveals that Kenji and Nid shared a fascination with a childrens storybook, The Last Lizard, in which a lizard awakens one day to find that it is the only creature left alive in the world.
Despite their differences he is obsessively tidy, she is laid-back and disorganised Kenji and Noi bond and she takes him to her house in the countryside outside Bangkok. There they spend an awkward three days getting to know each other, each experiencing feelings of love and grief (there is a sense that each is partly responsible for the death of a sibling). It transpires that she is planning to move to Osaka, Kenjis hometown, but he cannot return there and so they face the prospect of having to go their separate ways.
In truth, Last Life in the Universe resembles Pen-eks second film, 6ixtynin9, more than Monrak Transistor. In both films, the protagonists inadvertently bump off visiting gangsters and hide the bodies in their flats before fleeing. But whereas 6ixtynin9s protagonist, Tum, found herself caught up a random catalogue of disasters, it seems that Kenji is rather more heavily involved with the yakuza who visit his home. In this way Last Life in the Universe replaces the comic farce of the earlier film with a darker set of emotions.
This difference in emphasis can be attributed to the personnel involved in the production. Pen-ek benefits greatly from working with several very talented collaborators: the legendary Australian cinematographer Chris Doyle (famed for his work with Wong Kar-Wai); Japanese actor Asano Tadanobu in the role of Kenji; and the influential young Thai writer Prabda Yoon. Doyles influence on the film appears to have been significant, inspiring Pen-ek to adopt a more relaxed, imprecise approach to storytelling in which time and place are less concrete. Pen-ek also credits Doyle for conceiving some of the more curious moments in the film, including scenes in which the identities of Noi and Nid merge and the two actresses (real life sisters) appear interchangeably in an almost arbitrary fashion.
Prabdas influence on the script has a similar effect: the film is much less driven by narrative than is usual in Pen-eks films, there is much less dialogue, and the resolution is rather more ambiguous. Instead, storyline take second place to a sense of mood or tone; we might say that the film is more interested in what goes on in the characters heads than the events around them, and in the journey they take rather than the place they end up. To this end the film is helped no end by the intelligent, sensitive performance of Asano, surely now establishing himself as one of the great actors currently working anywhere in the world.
Overall, Last Life in the Universe doesnt make many concessions to its audience, tending as it does towards melancholy, ambiguity and introspection. That said, Pen-ek has not realised his grand idea of a film without laughs: there are many wry moments, mostly arising from Kenjis ill-conceived suicide attempts. Essentially, Pen-ek has tried to make a film as different from his previous films as possible, to avoid becoming stuck in one visual style or one type of storytelling, to challenge both himself and his audience. This last point is important. Although this film will tend to be seen as fundamentally a festival film, Pen-ek is pushing the envelope of Thai filmmaking. Last Life in the Universe is a co-production involving companies from Thailand, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands. While it might not be seen as a particularly Thai film domestically, Pen-ek and production company Cinemasia are bringing Thai films to the world, while also bringing foreign influences to Thai film. This will be crucial if Thai cinema is to fully mature into an important, globally-recognised national cinema. From this point of view, and judging by the positive reaction from film festivals this year, Last Life in the Universe might just be the most important Thai film yet.
จากคุณ :
lakari 
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23 ม.ค. 47 23:37:14
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