Sud pralad (2004) Reviews

• Exciting and full of mystery

  dvheaton2004-10-16

  An exhilarating, confusing adventure. The first half of the film tells a love story, leaving small hints at the ways people can never really know one another. The second half uses a mythic tale and experimental style to explore that theme. It's an attempt to use film and storytelling to portray the feelings and instincts that human beings have but can't find words for. Exciting, but not for those who want everything wrapped up and defined (the film argues against the very possibility of easy definitions). I also highly recommend his two other feature-length films: "Mysterious Object at Noon" and "Blissfully Yours." Hopefully "Tropical Malady" will be released widely enough to get the attention it deserves, and hopefully one day "Blissfully Yours" will make its way to DVD.

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• "A Film For The First People On Earth"

  loganx-22009-04-28

  A soldier named Keng, meets a young man named Tong in Thailand, the two begin a friendship. Keng makes constant sexual and amorous advances on Tong, who laughs them off, or makes a game out of them. He is never exactly interested, but never fully rebuffs either. The two make trips back and forth from the Jungle where Tong lives and Keng is on patrol with his military unit, to the city. We see the lush silent landscapes and the bustling city life, from dance hall karaoke to the cinema to the solitude of a quiet lake. When Keng finally makes a move in such a way, as to be beyond any doubt of a desire for intimacy (he kisses Tong's hands), Tong responds in turn by doing the same, and then walks into the darkness of the forest. Before Keng, can come to understand, the film takes a drastic turn in tone, style, and mood. We are told by an interjected 3d person narrator the story of a shaman who is a shape-shifter known to take different animal forms, who used to roam the forest playing tricks on people. One day a cunning hunter, did not fall into a trick and shot him, mid transformation from woman into tiger. The spirit of the shaman was then stuck as half tiger half man and eternally doomed to stalk the forest; tricking and devouring all in it's path. Keng, is then on patrol in his section of the forest, exploring rumors from villagers, about some "thing" killing cattle and causing general havoc. Alone on patrol in the woods, he becomes plagued by strange sounds, a sense of dread, and images of a naked boy, a tiger, spectral animals, and a glowing phosphorescent tree (which looks as beautiful as those in Aranofsky's "The Fountain"...I have no idea how they got that effect, on their budget, but it's miraculous...). This second half of the film, of course calls into question our understanding of Keng and Tong's prior relationship (if Tong ever existed at all.). While part one, is reminiscent of a modern quirky love story like "Chungking Express", the second half is like Terrance Mallick shooting a remake of "Predator". All sense of time and space, is swallowed by the jungle, and implicit politics of the first half are turned inside out in the second half; it is literally cat and mouse, with the possibility that the cat may want to be eaten by the mouse, or vice versa. The second half is also marked by the inclusion of tribal art and cave paintings, depicting the story of the shaman and the soldier, with sub-titles accompanying them. To paraphrase a description by director Weerasethakul it's like "a silent film for the first people on earth". And together with the visual effects, confident cinematography, clever use of editing, music, and sound, and disarming performances, it becomes magical. "Tropical Malady" combines the most modern and ancient notions of fear and desire, and makes something "new" out of them. This is Thailand's "Solaris", a story of the changing shapes and forms of want and need, of being deceived and allowing yourself to be deceived by them. It's slow pace, forces reflection on questions like what form or body comprises love, is it purely physical or something more, is it perhaps deception itself, a fools errand we invent to forget the savagery of the jungle around us, is it the need to devour or be devoured? There's a Scottish legend called Tam Lin (one of my favorites), long story short, a woman falls in love with a faerie, and discovers he used to be a man, but made a deal with the faeries to serve them if they spared his life, after an accident. Tam tells the women she can restore his humanity and claim him, if when the faeries pass on Halloween night, she will wrap her arms around him and not let go no matter what happens. She does this, and the faeries transform him into all manner of creature, some hot, some cold, some thorny, others slimy, some which bite and claw, etc, but she holds on throughout all his changes, til eventually she finds herself just cradling a man. And the faeries begrudgingly let her keep him, because she held on to what she loved, despite the way it changed with time. The film opens with these lines, "All of us are by nature wild beasts, our duty as human beings is to become like trainers, who keep their animals in check. And even teach them to perform tasks alien to their bestiality"-Tom Nakajima "Tropical Malady", is a good deal more ambiguous, I suspect more predatory and reflective as well, than Tam Lin, and comes from the opposite side of the world, but like that story manages to peculiarly harmonize emotional sensitivity and mythic scope, into a coherent whole. I wished I would have paid more attention to Weerasethakul "Mysterious Object At Noon" the first time I had the chance, he has a talent for experimenting with narrative and style that is missing in many films endlessly praised these days. The phrase I kept hearing from other reviews or the one I liked the best was "If Brokeback Mountain, was a mountain on the island from "Lost"...it's callous, with a smidgen of truth, but this is a much better movie than that. It is very slow moving though, the first hour will give you no hint of the second half (other than a few visual ones, look at the various statues in the backgrounds, etc), but for the bold and the patient, there is lush hypnotic reward to be had.

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• A fever of ecstasy

  howard.schumann2006-05-29

  Tropical Malady, the fourth feature by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is a film of astonishing lyric power that explores, in myth and reality, the nature of love. The film is divided into a conventional story of friendship between two men, and a mytho-poetic tale that takes the viewer into the middle of a dense Thai jungle. It is a strange and haunting tone poem that is as multi-layered as the forest in which it is filmed and may require repeated viewing to fully unravel. The opening story is about the tentative, playful relationship between Dong (Sakda Kaewbuadee), a shy young farmer who lives with his parents in the Thai countryside and Keng (Banlop Lomnoi), a soldier on furlough from the Thai army. The relationship has homoerotic undertones but they are suggested rather than openly acknowledged. Tong is unsophisticated and appears uneasy in the relationship but never loses control, giving their friendship a charm and sweetness rarely depicted on screen, especially between members of the same sex. They go to a movie, participate in an exercise class, take a sick dog to a clinic, and visit an underground temple. Their relationship develops in simple gestures of affection. Keng gives Tong a Clash tape but later tells him that when he gave him the tape he forgot to give him his heart. He places his hand on Tong's knee but the boy turns it into a mischievous game of squishing his hand with his other leg rather than acknowledging its sensual implications. Keng asks Tong if he can lay in his lap and Tong says "no", then a minute later, he changes that to "no problem". A scene in which Keng mouths Tong's hand after he had urinated and Tong returns the favor with equal passion advances the sexual nature of their relationship but it is not consummated. As Keng leaves for the country to resume his duties, the screen goes blank and we are transported into a land of myth and time in which a folk tale is being narrated in a jungle setting. Called A Spirit's Path, the mood suddenly changes to dark and foreboding. A narrator tells us that a shaman has transformed himself into a tiger and is terrorizing the countryside that Keng is under orders to protect. The soldier's mission is to subdue the tiger (Tong) and release the spirit of a white cow. The lovers are now the hunter and the hunted. Running through the jungle with tattoos all over his body, Tong is a naked man who can shape-shift into an animal at will. As Keng hunts his elusive prey, he begins to lose his grounding in the normal constructs of reality and the framing of the jungle scenes create an atmosphere of brooding surreal intensity. Stripped of the pretense we call civilization, on the border between two worlds, Keng's life unfolds in a desperate vision, suggesting that we are the both the dreamer and that which is being dreamt. He talks to animals, sees ghosts, and receives advice from a baboon who tells him "The tiger trails you like a shadow. He is lonesome. Kill him to free him from his world, or let him devour you to enter his world." As the tiger perches on the branch of a tree staring at him, Keng knows that in order to save his life, he must be willing to sacrifice it. "I give you my spirit, my flesh, and my memories", he tells the tiger, and "Every drop of my blood sings our song A song of happiness. There… do you hear it?" Beyond the shadow of illusion, Tropical Malady forces us to see in the dark. What begins with a wan smile ends in a fever of ecstasy.

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• A masterpiece of sensory cinema

  luckycinema2004-11-11

  This film crushed me to the bone, exhausted my heart, and I was never again the same. It brought back faith in the uncompromised vision of cinema. Its images will forever stay in my memory; the stare of the tiger, the smell of the tropical rain...this is sensory cinema, where time is freezed and narrative is stripped, and what's left is for us to finally feel. It is utopian, but it is also sad, because we realize that there is never (and never will be) a utopia. People say love is utopian, yet according to Mr. Weerasethakul, it is also very consuming, which becomes possessive, and at the end, a burden. At the end, the soldier goes into the jungle to find what's been consuming him. The tiger. He is lost and completely hopeless; he has no purpose without the tiger, yet he cannot possibly live with the tiger because of its nature. They are co-dependent; co-exist. Is that what great love is all about?

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• Just plain awesome - may contain spoilers

  ciski772005-07-11

  How hard is it to write up a commentary of a movie that speaks to your senses? Actually, 'Tropical Malady' wasn't even a movie as much as it was an experience for my ears, eyes and my mind. The movie is split in two halves that both tell the same story - a love story between a soldier and a countryman - one filtered through reality, one through mythology: the city where every action follows a rational and logical thread, and the jungle where there's no rule other than learning to coexist with nature and all events and emotions are primary and raw. In the second part, the country boy becomes the incarnation of a shape-shifting shaman and follows the soldier in the shape of an extraordinary tiger, as to mirror his forceful appeal and the soldier's wild desire: what was a polite, romantic and almost naive love story becomes a supernatural tale where all schemes and disguises are erased and all that's left is pure instinct. There are so many memorable moments (the theater sequence, the descent into the temple) but everything that happens in the second half speaks to you on a totally different level. Words are replaced by jungle noises, sounds become messengers of peace or impending danger - the soldier (Banlop Lomnoi, who's beyond awesome) has to choose whether to give in to desire or tame it, kill the tiger or let it kill him. The visual impact of this part is astonishing - the tiger appearing for the first time, the branches shaken by the wind, a tree lit up by fireflies: the beauty of the imagery is almost epic. Seriously, the movie deserves to be watched because putting this into words is almost like betraying its spirit. Awesome, awesome experience all throughout.

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