Perhaps I was in a different state of mind when I first saw this movie, but after revisiting it on DVD, it didn't make any more sense than it first did when I saw it, but I came out feeling so much more satisfied than most of the films I saw this year. It works best as a DVD movie for me I guess, especially on lonely nights where thoughts overrun and sleep is scarce, the calming glow of the movie is especially comforting and soothing.
The music and photography felt like a balm to me, but that is not all that made me re-love this film. The music sounds to me like waves on the ears, making me think, for lack of a better analogy, of a person in a placid swimming pool, where all is calm. Yet when you submerge yourself underwater and when you come back up again, the experience is so different you seem to have emerged into a different world. Where underwater the outside world is entirely muffled out, only traces of what you can usually hear seep into our ears, the peaceful allure is enticing, but you cannot stay there for long unless you lose your breath forever. When you come up for air, which is a necessity, life's banal and blaring sounds attack your ears again and you're forced into it, forced to hear it, forced to participate in it. The incessant beeping of an alarm, the buzzing of a doorbell. Never can we find peace in our world, unless we submerge ourselves in death, and the line between life and death is so abstract, that being in a swimming pool we experience both the peace and the banal, sometimes a split second out of the other.
At the same time, death and life are not extreme ends of each other. Rather, life encompasses death in its entirety, and vice versa. The dead person becomes a part of us, in the same way as we become part of the dead person when the person dies. Life and death aren't seen as two separate beings as much as they are one and interchangeable. As the characters in the film teeter in the brink of existence they experience both life and death at the same time, with Nid and Noi fusing into each other unpredictably and Kenji living out his suicidal fantasies in his head yet not being able to die at the same time, is he dead in his mind already, and if so, is he dead? I can't help but sigh at the beauty in which these two (or three?) characters encounter each other. They meet each other at the brink of their lives, just as they are going to lose it, and their lives coalesce and separate and intertwine with each other again, in the hands of fate, they are never one and alone, and yet they are separate identities merged into one.
Both characters yearn for resolution, for a place to take them out of the uncertain limbo they are in. Kenji longs for the resolve (or so he thinks in the beginning) of death and is probably why he arrived in Thailand from Japan. Noi wants to go to Japan to escape having to face the death of her sister and her uneasy existence after that. Yet in the film, there is no resolution or ultimate. Life and death are presented as equally fragile; as simply as life can be destroyed like how Nid died out of a complete freak accident, death can also be discarded away like how Kenji never manages to die. As such they are forced into an existence that has no resolution or comfort, in which the only comfort they can find is with each other. Noi ultimately is left alone in the airport waiting room, and Kenji is left in the police station, and as such, Kenji can only resolve this whole tale in his mind, in a fantasy in which he rejoins Noi in Japan. It is a sweet and heartwarming fantasy, but yet some might argue that it still remains a fantasy and that in reality, the ending is ultimately depressing.
This brings into question the importance of reality in this whole equation. To think of this film logically or mathematically will probably drive anyone nuts, for it is a film that defies any logic or truth. What is truth if life and death aren't at opposites? In the same way, how does reality get the upper hand over fantasy when in fantasy, Kenji has already died twice, and has a happy ending in the end? In any case, does all these even matter when one is in between the line that separates the cool placid waters and the outside world? In the same right, I love that the movie doesn't attempt to explain anything. In any case, what reason do you need to die? If a person can die as suddenly and inexplicably as when shot by his best friend, why can't you take your own life? What reason does anyone need to meet, or in any case, fall in love, then get separated again? What reason do you need to make an abstract, surreal, yet half-completed film? The room in which it allows the audience to complete the film makes it attractive for its unfinished quality. It does not provide anything to be fully satisfying, it does not even provide controversy for one to think about.
Watching this film again, to me, is like plunging into the state of mind of the film again. The consciousness akin to being in a swimming pool, amidst the calm we have two extremes fused into each other, working off each other, and most importantly we can never go into any of the two completely, just teetering on the edge of both ends hoping for fate to deliver someone that comes from the same position for our lives to coalesce.
The music and photography felt like a balm to me, but that is not all that made me re-love this film. The music sounds to me like waves on the ears, making me think, for lack of a better analogy, of a person in a placid swimming pool, where all is calm. Yet when you submerge yourself underwater and when you come back up again, the experience is so different you seem to have emerged into a different world. Where underwater the outside world is entirely muffled out, only traces of what you can usually hear seep into our ears, the peaceful allure is enticing, but you cannot stay there for long unless you lose your breath forever. When you come up for air, which is a necessity, life's banal and blaring sounds attack your ears again and you're forced into it, forced to hear it, forced to participate in it. The incessant beeping of an alarm, the buzzing of a doorbell. Never can we find peace in our world, unless we submerge ourselves in death, and the line between life and death is so abstract, that being in a swimming pool we experience both the peace and the banal, sometimes a split second out of the other.
At the same time, death and life are not extreme ends of each other. Rather, life encompasses death in its entirety, and vice versa. The dead person becomes a part of us, in the same way as we become part of the dead person when the person dies. Life and death aren't seen as two separate beings as much as they are one and interchangeable. As the characters in the film teeter in the brink of existence they experience both life and death at the same time, with Nid and Noi fusing into each other unpredictably and Kenji living out his suicidal fantasies in his head yet not being able to die at the same time, is he dead in his mind already, and if so, is he dead? I can't help but sigh at the beauty in which these two (or three?) characters encounter each other. They meet each other at the brink of their lives, just as they are going to lose it, and their lives coalesce and separate and intertwine with each other again, in the hands of fate, they are never one and alone, and yet they are separate identities merged into one.
Both characters yearn for resolution, for a place to take them out of the uncertain limbo they are in. Kenji longs for the resolve (or so he thinks in the beginning) of death and is probably why he arrived in Thailand from Japan. Noi wants to go to Japan to escape having to face the death of her sister and her uneasy existence after that. Yet in the film, there is no resolution or ultimate. Life and death are presented as equally fragile; as simply as life can be destroyed like how Nid died out of a complete freak accident, death can also be discarded away like how Kenji never manages to die. As such they are forced into an existence that has no resolution or comfort, in which the only comfort they can find is with each other. Noi ultimately is left alone in the airport waiting room, and Kenji is left in the police station, and as such, Kenji can only resolve this whole tale in his mind, in a fantasy in which he rejoins Noi in Japan. It is a sweet and heartwarming fantasy, but yet some might argue that it still remains a fantasy and that in reality, the ending is ultimately depressing.
This brings into question the importance of reality in this whole equation. To think of this film logically or mathematically will probably drive anyone nuts, for it is a film that defies any logic or truth. What is truth if life and death aren't at opposites? In the same way, how does reality get the upper hand over fantasy when in fantasy, Kenji has already died twice, and has a happy ending in the end? In any case, does all these even matter when one is in between the line that separates the cool placid waters and the outside world? In the same right, I love that the movie doesn't attempt to explain anything. In any case, what reason do you need to die? If a person can die as suddenly and inexplicably as when shot by his best friend, why can't you take your own life? What reason does anyone need to meet, or in any case, fall in love, then get separated again? What reason do you need to make an abstract, surreal, yet half-completed film? The room in which it allows the audience to complete the film makes it attractive for its unfinished quality. It does not provide anything to be fully satisfying, it does not even provide controversy for one to think about.
Watching this film again, to me, is like plunging into the state of mind of the film again. The consciousness akin to being in a swimming pool, amidst the calm we have two extremes fused into each other, working off each other, and most importantly we can never go into any of the two completely, just teetering on the edge of both ends hoping for fate to deliver someone that comes from the same position for our lives to coalesce.