Wonderful Town

On Saturday I went to watch an independent film by Aditya Assarat (pronounced Athit as in sun) called Wonderful Town at CentralWorld.

It’s about an architect name Ton from Bangkok who was sent to a small town in Southern Thailand after the tsunami to oversee plans for the reconstruction of a hotel near the beach. He stayed at a nearby rundown and empty hotel where he met Na, the hotel’s caretaker and owner. They fall in “love” but problems arise along the way.

With minimal dialogue and expressionless/stiff acting, I honestly didn’t really like it. I thought that the whole movie was painstakingly slow, which made it incredibly boring. Part of the reason is because I'm usually drawn to characters the most when watching movies, especially the conversations they have with each other (like in Before Sunset).

We also had a chance to talk to the director after the movie, which actually turned out to be the more interesting part of watching this movie.

He said that the movie was purposely slow in order to recreate the atmosphere of the town, which he filmed in Takua Pa. According to him, people there were still haunted by the tsunami. The ghosts (of the past) were still haunting them, figuratively. Although reconstruction had begun, he said that it’s still harder to fix people’s emotions than physical objects and buildings. Though they know that they should move on, they wonder if they deserve such happiness. Since it is a small community and almost everybody knows one another, the sadness and loneliness becomes feelings of jealousy and ill-will when they see others happy.

*spoilers*

I asked him a few questions surrounding the death of Ton by the hands of a local gang led by Na’s little brother at the end. He said that Ton was pretty much the scapegoat. They saw Ton as an outsider and he became an easy target for them to vent their anger, annoyance and feelings of pressure.

The weird thing was that after he got killed, it was as though the town suddenly did a 360. Color returned to the drabby town, Na’s little brother returned to help at the hotel, the grandma found her fan (she was looking for it during the whole movie), it was as though hope resurfaced from death. Anyway, I asked him whether this was kind of misleading considering Ton was killed by these people and that it’s almost saying that you can get away with murder and that life will become better from it. He replied that yeah it can be looked at that way and that it’s definitely not a movie for kids. He did say something else I think but I can't remember. All in all, I still felt that the ending was unjustified.

*end of spoilers*

I also asked him some other questions about the film industry. Some things I found interesting from what he said:

1. It took him 2 months to complete the script but 2 years to get enough funding for the movie.
2. It was incredibly difficult to get funding from Thailand so he had to sell it as a film promoting and preservingThai arts and culture.
3. Going to film school abroad or in Thailand is the same. He pretty much said that everything you really learn in going to college abroad is how to be more independent, etc. Equipment and technique-wise, it’s pretty much the same. You can’t learn to be an artist.
4. His favorite movie is Yi Yi by Edward Yang.

Throughout the whole movie, I kept thinking to myself how this movie could be better, which is probably something I should’ve asked him, whether he was content with how the movie came out or whether he should’ve changed something.

Even though I didn’t like the movie, what I do like about movies like this is that it gives people an opportunity to discuss it, their ideas about the movie meanings, the characters, the symbolism, etc. It’s not a popcorn movie where you go just to watch and come out saying, yeah that’s a good movie, period, end of discussion.