Movie review: 13 เกมสยอง (13 Beloved)

I didn't plan to write reviews for two films by the same director in a row, but that's how it happened. Since I probably won't make it to any movies in the theater any time soon, I'm stuck with what's available on DVD. Today I watched 13 เกมสยอง, a.k.a. 13 Beloved, and now also a.k.a. 13: Game of Death, which will be released on DVD in the U.S. next month.

That's right: ชูเกียรติ ศักดิ์วีรกูล (Chukiat Sakweerakul), director of รักแห่งสยาม (The Love of Siam), knows how to do more than make audiences giggle and swoon at teenage boys locking lips. 13 Beloved is an earlier directorial effort of his, from 2006. It never managed to capture my attention before, but based on Wise Kwai putting it in his top 10 Thai films, and because I thought รักแห่งสยาม had a lot of good points, I decided to check it out.

13 เกมสยอง tells the story of ภูชิต Puchit (Krissada Terrence), a band-instrument salesman who finds himself unable to keep up with increasing debt. His car is repossessed the same day an important sale goes sour, after which he finds himself out of a job with a 50,000 baht credit bill, and his mom calling to borrow money in a hurry. After getting a mysterious phone call, Puchit is forced by his dire circumstances into a sick game of 13 challenges, with the promise of a 100 million baht if he makes it to the end.

Now that I've seen two films of his, let me say this: Chukiat is another director I'm going to keep an eye on. I'm not in love with any of his work, but much like I said about รักแห่งสยาม, it's well above the average Thai film.

Amidst its more serious themes, 13 เกมสยอง has a running comic streak, and some truly hilarious moments that prove how laugh tracks and silly sound effects don't make comedy better. The scene with the "king" at the bus stop was inspired, and the scene with the Chinese family answering (er, not answering) the telephone cracked me up, too. Sometimes the film danced on the edge of the ubiquitous verbal slapstick brand of Thai comedy, but mostly it managed to restrain itself and keep me laughing. The scene in the police station is the main exception, going over the top with shouted insults like a pretty girl who doesn't know how much makeup is enough.

The effects weren't great. When it was trying too hard to act like Saw or Hostel (bloated corpse, exposed brains), it took me out of the story. Fortunately the bulk of the film's effectiveness rests upon the shoulders of its protagonist. Krissada excellently portrays the desperation of a man in the shackles of debt. The main premise serves as an apt commentary on our potential for depravity, and how we propel ourselves further down that path with each thoughtless or cruel act we commit. Sometimes we are compelled by circumstances, but in the end we must take responsibility for our own actions. I thought the film showed this conflicted part of human nature well: the clash between ideal self and actual self, and reconciling the two when a lot is on the line. This is I would never go on a show like Fear Factor. My ideal self does not do things like eat animal innards or let himself get buried alive in cockroaches, and I don't want to put myself in a situation where my actual self would even question what I consider such a basic truth about myself. (Then again, I do enjoy the occasional baggie of fried crickets from a street vendor.)

After loving the first half, the latter half was a disappointment. Half an hour in, I was saying to myself that this is a great premise worthy of a franchise. At 90 minutes, I began to wonder whether the premise could be rescued from the well it was floating in. It dragged on too long, with an unsatisfying twist. I haven't read the comic it's based on, so I can't compare the two. And I probably need to watch it again to catch the details of the ending, since I watched it without Thai subtitles. Sometimes things fly past me during inattentive moments. But the end felt squandered.

This film is not one I'd recommend to someone who had never seen a Thai movie. It suffers from some of the flaws of its numerous and terrible cousins of Thai cinema. Chukiat strikes me as a writer/director in need of a writing partner. If he can find someone to help write his screenplays, I think he could make a real masterpiece. Nonetheless, 13 เกมสยอง was good enough that I told a couple friends about it. And that says a lot.

Book review: A Physician at the Court of Siam

A few days ago I finished reading A Physician at the Court of Siam by Malcolm Smith (Oxford in Asia Paperbacks, 1985, 164 pages). First published in 1946, it's gone out of print, but I picked up a used copy on Amazon a while back. Took me almost two years to get around to reading it. I'm glad I finally made the time.

Malcolm Smith served as a court doctor for Queen Saowapa Pongsi (พระองค์เจ้าเสาวภาผ่องศรี, alternately spelled Saovabha Bhongsi), one of the four royal consorts of King Chulalongkorn, and mother to Kings Vajiravudh and Prajadhipok (Ramas VI and VII), and thus he has some extremely unique and rare insights into palace life during his time in the country's history. Smith arrived in Siam in 1905, and maintained a private practice outside of the palace in Bangkok while constantly being on call for the Queen. After Rama V passed away in 1910, Saowapa became Queen Mother, and she retained Dr. Smith as her physician in an unofficial capacity until her death in 1919.

If Smith's account concerned only his years in Siam, it would be of great value. But he combines his personal account with a great deal of research, particularly on the history of the Chakri Dynasty, in addition to the period of his own experiences. The main character in many ways is Queen Saowapa, as she is the member of the royal household whom Smith came to know best. He writes of her eccentricities in a fascinating level of detail and candor. The book reads very quickly, and fortunately lacking much of the ethnocentrism of so many earlier Western accounts. While one can tell that Smith views the typical Southeast Asian laid back attitude towards work and efficiency with a predictable Western distaste, he has enough objectivity (and perhaps enough distance, writing the book many years after leaving Siam), to avoid treading too far into "noble savage" territory like so many of the early Westerners in Siam who have left us their stories to read. And since he did not travel to Thailand as a missionary, his account makes nary a reference to religion at all. So we are spared the supplications (so typical in early Western accounts) for the expeditious redemption of the ignorance-shrouded, hell-bound souls of the heathen Siamese.

This book is perhaps unlike any other in its details of Siamese court life, excepting Anna Leonowens' An English Governess at the Court of Siam, the book (presented as fact but mixed with plenty of fiction) which formed the basis for Margaret Landon's 1942 book Anna and the King of Siam (even looser with the facts), which became further distorted in the 1946 film of the same name, and again into the cartoonish (if not unenjoyable) Broadway musical and film The King and I and finally culminating in the utterly preposterous 1999 endeavor Anna and the King. Smith seems to be the more neutral and thus reliable source. He even gets in a mild dig at Leonowens (keep in mind they were not contemporaries--she arrived in Thailand 40 years before he did). He writes of her unflattering portrayal of King Mongkut, "we need not believe all that she said; her books, particularly her second one [Romance of the Harem], show that she was gifted with a vivid imagination which at times took charge of her pen" (p. 42).

Much of Leonowens' negative portrayal of the monarch's private life stems from her extreme displeasure with polygamy. On this point Leonowens and Smith could not disagree more. In fact, Smith goes so far as to include a chapter in his book defending the practice in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Siam. He examines the hyperbolic estimates by what he terms "irresponsible" writers of the size of the Siamese kings' harems, and compares those estimates with the official chronicle to debunk them as uninformed. He also makes an attempt to defend the inbreeding, ahem, "consanguineous marriage" practiced in the Siamese royal family, as in many a royal family worldwide (his employer Queen Saowapa was the half-sister of her husband King Chulalongkorn--children of King Mongkut by different wives). Smith's take on these issues makes for a compelling alternate perspective, even if his defensiveness struck me as odd.

In all, I recommend Smith's book as a quick read that will easily sustain the interest of anyone with the slightest inclination for Thai history.

My typical modus operandi for selecting new reading material is to start several books at once. Right now I've started National Identity and its Defenders: Thailand Today, edited by Craig J. Reynolds, a collection of articles on the shaping and maintenance of the Thai national culture and identity which is already turning out to be utterly fascinating; Mo Bradley and Thailand, by Donald C. Lord, a book of ever-increasing rarity about Dan Beach Bradley (of Bangkok Recorder and first Thai-Thai dictionary fame); and Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation, which has been recommended to me by a couple of people. It remains to be seen which will succeed in drawing me in before the others.

If you have any book recommendations, please leave a comment, or write me at the email address at the bottom of the page.

Book review: โลกด้านที่หันหลังให้ดวงอาทิตย์

โลกด้านที่หันหลังให้ดวงอาทิตย์ (The Dark Side of the Earth), by วินทร์ เลียววาริณ (Win Lyovarin), is the third book in Win's life in a day series. It is preceded by หนึ่งวันเดียวกัน (translated into English as A Day in the Life) and วันแรกของวันที่เหลือ (The First Day of the Rest of Your Life).

These books are collections of "experimental short stories," so-called because they use a loose definition of the word "story." They are certainly short, rarely exceeding 2 pages per story, and sometimes containing only a few words at all. But the style is a mixture of verbal and visual storytelling, often with an emphasis on the latter. Win has a background in graphic design, and he employs his skills in this area to great effect. His experimental short stories are a unique brand of social criticism, which stand out for being both subtle and biting at the same time.

As the series name suggests, the life in a day books are windows into the thoughts and lives of ordinary people through their everyday experiences. Frequently funny, and just as often poignant, Win is great at putting a spin on things that forces the reader to stop and think--the intended message isn't always obvious.

One of my favorite stories in this third collection is ค่าครองชีพ (Cost of Living), which shows a receipt from a supermarket on the left-hand page, and on the facing page, gives the internal dialogue of the shopper for each of the ten-or-so items on the list as she was deciding what to buy. She consistently opts for the smaller package or the cheaper brand, commenting on the need for frugality. The last item on the list is an anti-wrinkle cream that costs twice as much as the rest of the items combined, and to which the shopper's comment is ถูกจังเลย (What a bargain!). It cracked me up, and I immediately had my wife read that one. She didn't find it as amusing as I did, though. :)

This kind of commentary on society is necessary, in my mind. Sometimes Win's stories are a critique of consumerism in general, and the "short cut culture"--the desire to make it big, get rich quick, find your fortune--that is fast encompassing the globe. But I think the more general point is to suggest a new way to look at mundane, familiar things. This is one of the strong themes of this series--multifacetedness. No matter what we think we know, or know we think, there's always another side to things. And the title of the book suggests this--the title more literally translates as The Side of Earth that Faces Away From the Sun--thus, an uncovering of hidden things, things that we may want to keep hidden, but things that must inevitably come in the light and under scrutiny sooner or later. Any author who can present this sort of satire with such clever style is worth reading--and sharing--in my book.

In keeping with my last review, I will let the author's words speak for themselves through translation. Given the cruciality of the images to most stories, I'm somewhat limited in by format to which stories are easy to render effectively in English. But I've selected a story for which the illustration is a complement, rather than an integral part of the story. In บทเรียนจากลูกข่าง (Lesson From a Top), there is a picture of a top (the kind where you wrap a string around it and then pull the string to start the top spinning) laying on its side, with its string coiled by its side, one end snaking across to the right-hand page and encircling the brief text of the story:

I watched my eight-year old son playing with a top with his friends in the parking lot in front of the tenement.
I called for him to come. "You have to do your schoolwork."
"Can I play some more first?"
"Playing is not as important as studying..."
I looked at the top in his hand.
"We have to get an education. You have to learn that our lives are like a top. Education is the string. The top can't stand on its own without the string."
"But the top can't stand on its own for very long."
"So you have to continually learn new things."
"But in the end the top falls down anyway. Studying is a waste of time."
I raised my voice. "Stop playing this instant! Go home and do your homework! Go!"

I'll save my response to the story for the comments. Now who will have first crack?

Play Review: ฟ้าจรดทราย

Last night my wife and I went with a friend to see the premiere show at the new Ratchadalai Theatre in the Esplanade shopping center. The show was ฟ้าจรดทราย, a Thai-language musical based on the (rather hefty) novel of the same name by โสภาค สุวรรณ.

Almost two months ago, we had decided to read the novel as a couple. We didn't get very far because, frankly, I didn't think it was very good, which killed my motivation. When we read Thai books together, I usually do all the reading, out loud, so I can practice my language skills. In the 50 pages or so we managed to get through, I wasn't impressed. But as it turns out, the first 50 pages of the book barely figures into the condensed plot of the 3-hour musical. And while I still think the story is weak and unoriginal, I enjoyed the play.

The Ratchadalai Theatre (รัชดาลัยเธียเตอร์) is being touted as Thailand's first "Broadway" class theater, which is a definite overstatement. We sat center toward the front of the balcony, and while I didn't get a clear view of the lower level, I'd estimate the seating capacity at upwards of 1000, which is quite a lot considering it's jammed into a shopping mall. The theater is not very wide, making it feel rather small and claustrophobic. The super-steep balcony adds to that effect. I've never seen a Broadway play, but from what I have seen of playhouses and theaters in the U.S., I'd rank the design higher than the decoration. The seats alternate in three garish shades of muppet-fur upholstery--purple, pink, and red. The carpet is a tasteful pattern of black and yellow, and the walls are dark wood, so the seats just plain clash. Very movie theater--not upscale at all.

*Spoiler alert* I'm going to recap the plot, as I figure many readers will not get a chance to see it (it's on hiatus after tonight, and closes after another run of shows in July). Consider yourself warned.

The story of ฟ้าจรดทราย is fairly basic. Michelle (มิเชล) is an orphaned ลูกครึ่ง of mixed French and Asian stock. Neither the book nor the play specify just what Asian country, but Michelle's mixed parentage causes her to be rejected by her father's wealthy French aristocratic family after her parents are killed. The book opens with Michelle graduating from high school and preparing to bid farewell to the French convent in which she was raised; the play opens a bit later on, with Michelle arriving in the town of Hilfarah, in the unnamed middle-eastern homeland of her best friend from school, Kashfiya (แคชฟียา). Kashfiya is an idealistic, westernized Muslim lass with grand plans to come open a girls' school in her country that will help cure it of its patriarchal restrictions on women. Michelle is hired to be a teacher at the planned school.

In the time frame of the play, the monkey wrench is thrown into the works immediately--a man comes between the best friends. Said man is Kashfiya's French boyfriend, Robert, a hormone-driven oaf with a penchant for public displays of affection and who has clearly never heard the phrase "no means no." Since her parents will never approve, she tells them that Robert is actually Michelle's boyfriend, and without much effort, Robert himself becomes convinced of this. Despite the fact that Michelle doesn't share his affection, when Kashfiya intercepts a love missive from Robert to her best friend, she flies into a musical rage and vows to take revenge. Kashfiya's parents have betrothed her to become a concubine of Hiflarah's rajah, King Ahmed, but she tricks Michelle into wearing the outfit which lets the royal guards know which woman to come carry away on their shoulders to join the ranks of the King's harem. This contrived bit of mistaken identity works in a musical of this sort, but I seriously wonder how it could have possibly worked in the novel, since the way it's portrayed on the stage, Michelle doesn't seem at all surprised or opposed to being carried off by strange men. Go figure.

Once in the palace, the mistake is quickly uncovered, but the rajah decides to keep Michelle anyway (he probably lost the receipt). She is distraught, and butts heads with the rajah's personal doctor, Sharif, an uber-loyal servant whose father's life was once saved by Ahmed. He sets her straight on her backwards and disrespectful Western ways, and she calls him uncivilized. Anyone who has read, say, Much Ado About Nothing, or Pride and Prejudice, can see from a mile away that Sharif and Michelle are destined to be together. After their talk, she is unwillingly brought to the rajah for her official night of harem initiation. But as Ahmed is disrobing her, the scheming Oman (who I think is the younger brother of the Ahmed--not sure on that detail) conveniently attacks the palace, sort of stab-kicking Ahmed behind a curtain, "killing" him. Sharif comes to Michelle's rescue, and they escape into the desert together.

While they travel in the desert, Michelle disguises herself as Sharif's deaf and dumb servant boy, and they continue to fight/flirt. One highlight of the play--judging by the audience's reaction--is when our heroes meet the obligatory comic relief in the form of a desert caravan, whose leader tries to matchmake for his amusingly overweight daughter, who does a belly dance and tries her best to live up to her father's hype. But before long, the two fugitives bond in the desert and share a night of implied passion.

As the story progresses, we are given twist after unsurprising twist. There's the close call, where Oman's assassins nearly unmask Michelle, but fall for the old "she's got leprosy" routine; eventually Sharif and Michelle are captured by another band of apparent bandits, who turn out to be Ahmed's personal bodyguards, because--shock--Ahmed didn't really die! We are soon given the obligatory final act falling-out, in which Sharif resumes his loyalty to Ahmed and insists Michelle must continue on as his master's concubine. But Ahmed figures things out and eventually gives them his blessing. Only one more obstacle: someone must volunteer to sneak back into the palace at Hilfarah to assassinate Oman, and unbeknownst to Michelle, Sharif is the man for the job. Ahmed breaks the news to her, but Michelle courageously tells her beloved to do his duty. In the final climactic sword fight, Oman is killed but Sharif is also "killed" by Oman's guards. And once again, no one who has read a book or seen a movie before is actually surprised that Sharif isn't really dead.

Like I said, the plot is very run-of-the-mill and predictable. There's also some pretty heavy-handed lessons to be learned. At one point, Sharif tells Michelle that it is the belief of the people of Hilfarah that a wish made on a shooting star will come true. Michelle's wish is that all nations and races will be able to get along and not judge one another based on their skin--I literally turned to my wife and made a gagging motion at this point. Very saccharine. There are also the only-slightly-more-subtle lessons that (1) Western ways are not our ways, exemplified by "kissing in public is bad"--the way the young Frenchman Robert is portrayed, you're sure he's buying roofies in bulk; and (2) loyalty to king and country comes above everything else. There's a nationalistic feel to the story, despite the fact that none of the characters are Thai. It's escapist allegory, which doesn't surprise me in the current climate, but it makes me wonder how the rest of the novel reads. Not quite enough to put it back on my reading list yet, though.

The title ฟ้าจรดทราย means "sky meets sand," which in part is a reference to the desert, where sand reaches out as far as the eye can see, all the way to the horizon. The other significance of this title is that in one song in the play, Sharif compares himself to sand and Michelle to the sky--although they appear to meet, no matter how far you travel towards the horizon, they never actually do--it's just an illusion.

For me, ฟ้าจรดทราย is redeemed somewhat by its production values. Some of the effects done with the scenery are quite good. That said, I don't understand why, if the final climactic battle scene between Sharif and Oman is a sword fight (followed by another sword battle between Oman's men and Ahmed's men), they would choose to use wooden swords, and not at least give us some sound effects. I realize it's a highly stylized musical play, so realism is neither possible nor expected, but it took me out of the story every time swords clashed with a "pok pok" sound like the ก๋วยเตี๋ยว carts that sell soi-to-soi. The singing is decent, but it's probably also the part that puts the clearest gap between this play and any professionally produced musical in the United States. It's just not world class. The harmonies sound good, but most of the solo performances sound, at best, university theater caliber. Any time someone tried to hit a high note, I cringed, and would pay money to hear Simon Cowell's commentary on those moments. One of the best singers is Kashfiya, who has a regretfully small part, played by รฐา โพธิ์งาม (also a singer in her "day job," known as ญาญ่า หญิง).

This review probably makes it sound otherwise, but overall, I did enjoy the play. But I enjoyed it probably in the same way I'd enjoy chick flicks if Scorsese and Coppola weren't an option. Enjoyable, but nothing to write home about, ฟ้าจรดทราย is nonetheless a step forward in opening up the cultural options in Bangkok, particularly to the natives. I'm not versed in the history of stage theater in Thailand, but I'm quite certain this is the most expensive play ever produced here. The amount of effort and expense that went into the scoring, the choreographing, the production--everything--is clearly immense. Let's hope that the success of this play (its run was recently extended significantly) will result in many new and interesting options for theater-going denizens of Bangkok in the future.

But if there's one clear sign that stage theater has finally "arrived" in Thailand, it's this: Andrew Lloyd Webber's it-just-won't-die musical Cats is scheduled at the Ratchadalai. I'd prefer that it were Phantom, but I have to admit that I'll be in line come November. I'm grateful to have anything to watch that isn't the prime-time soap operas.

Review: ความสุขของกะทิ (Part 1)

Title: ความสุขของกะทิ (The Happiness of Kati)
Author: งามพรรณ เวชชาชีวะ (Ngamphan Wetchachiwa)
First published: 2003

ความสุขของกะทิ is a slim little book that won the 2006 SEAWrite Award for best novel. It relates the experiences of Kati, a young girl dealing with the illness and death of her mother. I enjoyed the portrayal of family relationships in this book. The protagonist is a nine year old, but she's written with a mix of curiosity and natural wisdom. She is the lens through which each member of the family is portrayed, as they deal with their grief and loss. The maturity of her attitudes and insights make Kati feel more of a Platonic ideal than a believable character, but I don't think that undermines the intention of the story. For me, it was a book about dealing with mortality and grief. I can relate to the underlying emotions, and I can't help but think that the author was moved to write this book by the death of someone close to her.

I didn't read this with the plan to review it, so I don't have any great analysis to give of it. That's not really my style anyway. But I enjoyed the emotional journey, and lately I've been wanting to practice my hand at translation, so I'll jump right in. My style is to translate fairly closely, so I haven't done much to vary the style and word choice here. The book is 27 very short chapters, and below is my translation of the first.

Part 1: The House on the Canal

Chapter 1. Wok and spatula

"Mom never promised she would come back."

The sound of the metal spatula in the wok awakened Kati, as it had done on previous days. Actually, the pleasant fragrance of cooked rice had something to do with it, too, along with the smell of smoke from the stove and the scent of fried eggs. But it was the sound of the spatula knocking against the wok that pulled Kati free from her slumbering visions and into the new day.

Kati never took much time to bathe and dress. Grandpa often teased her, "Finished running past the water already, are you?" Grandma turned to look as Kati came into the kitchen. She never smiled or uttered a greeting. Grandpa said that Grandma's smiles are so rare, they should be packaged and exported for sale in other countries.

Kati dished rice into a bowl. The beautiful white color of the rice went well with fresh morning air like this. Steam from the rice in her arms floated up around her chest and heart, which kept time as Kati raced out to the pier. Grandpa sat reading the newspaper, waiting with a tray of food as usual. Before long, the sound of oars on water could be heard as the front of a boat appeared around the bend. The saffron robes of Luang Lung added an extra measure of freshness to the atmosphere. Pi Tong, Luang Lung's pupil, flashed his white teeth from afar. Grandpa said that Pi Tong should join a comedy troupe--his smile was like a contagious disease. It sprang from his cheerful heart, proceeded directly to his mouth and eyes, and radiated in ripples around him--like throwing a stone into water--until everyone around felt it.

Grandpa poured the ceremonial water beneath the bo tree. Kati made merit with her grandfather, and recited a prayer in her mind.

Their breakfast awaited them. A large meal like this one every morning. Grandpa stuck to boiled vegetables and chili paste, leaving the stir fry and fried fish nearly all for Kati. Grandpa avoided every kind of fried food. He complained behind Grandma's back that it was like her food had been shellacked--some day he would take her wok and spatula and donate them to the army to smelt into a cannon for protecting the nation. If Grandma heard, she would have a fit. On that day, the sound of Grandma banging the spatula against the wok would be deafening and incessant, so much that it would be surprising if the wok survived to do its duty another day.