Forest Grump

Watching a Tarantino flick can be an intense experience. Kill Bill, Volume 1, opens up with a scene of the bride, Uma Thurman, on the day of her wedding. You know it's not all sunshine and happiness, because it's Tarantino. Ex-boss Bill, played by Kung-Fu's David Carradine, has tracked the bride down, and figures no one runs away from him. Neither she, nor anyone else will survive that day. Or so Bill thinks.

There's an intensity in that opening scene that exemplifies a director who's on top of his game. The gore and violence don't stop there, as the bride, unconscious for years suddenly awakens in a hospital bed while some fellow is having his way with her, until she has her way with his tongue (chomp!). From then on, it's vengeance time!

Ultimately, Tarantino has one trump that makes his films go. Kill someone, and you're set. By the time a movie goer reaches teenage years, he has seen hundreds, if not thousands of murders. Most are of the banal sort. Despite seeing so many different ways it can happen, directors still find ways to make the experience visceral, pulling you into the moment.

Kill Bill is split into two halves. The first volume is intense, with at least four different sequences of fighting. Uma vs. Vivaca, then an anime sequence, Uma vs. the Crazy 88, and finally Uma vs. Lucy. The second volume is less so, chronicling the training that Uma goes through, as well as her dealing with the remaining two members of the Deadly Viper Assasination Squad, as finally Bill himself. The two parts are indeed two parts. What happens before and what happens after. The tone shifts between the two, but the story is indeed a continuation.

I told Dave that I was writing up a review of Tropical Malady. He suggested that I should write one maybe two more reviews after the fact. There are two reasons to do this. First, the film is so dense that you need time to reveal its many layers, from the storyline that's being told, to the subtext, to the cultural signficance. The second reason is that it seems to be about nothing, and you're wondering what the hell happened.

Tropical Malady clearly falls in the second. Contrast this with Kill Bill. No one really dies in Tropical Malady. There are no scenes of intense emotion, at least, not in the conventional sort of way. There's a minimal amount of dialogue, which does not advance a plot.

Like Kill Bill, Tropical Malady is split in two parts, each with its own title. Unlike Kill Bill, neither half would survive on its own. The first half tells a quaint love story that takes so long to get off the ground that you don't even see it as a love story at all.

Much like going into Kill Bill, I went to Tropical Malady with high hopes. It's been in several critics top ten list. I found it surprising that, for the first half hour, I was looking at my watch. Well, metaphorically speaking, as it would have been too dark to look at my watch, and as I don't wear a watch. For a while, I didn't even know who the main characters were.

Tropical Malady was showing me life in Thailand, opening up with soldiers out patrolling the fields, who have spotted a dead body. It's not until we meet the two elderly Thai women that the story line begins to pick up somewhat. One woman runs a shop. She sells pot on the side. She has a wooden phallus that serves as her lucky charm. It's these small quirky touches that prevent the first half from falling to complete mundaneness.

The second part would be incomprehensible without the first, since the characters are not introduced in the second half. Keng, who is the soldier in the first half, appears again in the second. Tong, who is Keng's love interest in the first half, could be said to reprise his role, but he's now more symbolic. Is he man? Is he a tiger?

Most of the time in the second half is spent following Keng through dense Thai jungle, where he follows the tracks of his ghostly prey, watching him remove leeches, trying to understand what's going on. The second half is framed by the story of a shaman that can change to animal form. It presents an ancient myth being retold in the story of Keng and Tong.

This story is an overlay of the first half, and in so doing, makes more sense of both parts. You can't really say the same about Kill Bill which really feels like a complete story, the first half and the second half not at all reinforcing each other.

Like the first half, the second half takes a long time to get going. As it proceeds, it gets more mysterious. I had expected a tour de force, something akin to the light show at the end of 2001. Until that point, 2001 is as bland as can be. The characters are marginally interesting, if at all, and it's done to great effect, because the alien intelligence seem that much more otherwordly and profound when it happens.

This isn't quite as true in Tropical Malady. Instead of looking forward at the profundity of some vast intelligence, Tropical Malady turns back, towards the telling of an ancient Thai myth, rooting the story in the powerful presence of the history of a nation. What is plain and ordinary in the first half is given resonance and power in the second. If Keng is reluctant to push the relationship as far as it can go in the first part, he summons the courage in the second.

Remarkably, Weerasethakul presents the second half with few words, framing the second half with an ancient tale. At times, I was shifting uncomfortably, waiting for the big flash that never comes. Yet, it does come, in its own way.

Weerasethakul ramps the degree of difficulty in this film. He doesn't resort to any of a myriad number of cinematic tricks that he could use to keep the emotion at a fever pitch. No music, no dramatic special effects, no charged speeches, no explosions. Its power is drawn from paintings of a time, long ago, and a story told through the generations.