Anocha Suwichakornpong's second feature,‘By
the Time it Gets Dark’ is a mystical mystery that
is haunted by the 1977 massacre in Bangkok. To unjustifiably simplify a complex
film, ‘By the Time it Gets Dark’
deals with a traumatic part of Thai history which unfortunately has been
disregarded with apathy in its modern society.
This introspective and political film
begins seemingly conventionally, about a young woman Ann, (Visra
Vichit-Vadakan) attempting to make a film about the massacre, interviewing a surviving
student protester Taew (Rassami Paoluengton) at a rural cottage, presumably in
the outskirts of Bangkok. They go through the motions of an interview, digging
deep into the past with flashbacks of the time when the students
begin to question the authorities as well as having reenactments in the future. Thus far, the beginning is easy to follow.
Later on however, the narrative or plot, if that is the right term for this film, morphs regularly, turning and twisting. Ann’s relative
failure in getting Taew to open up begins the second part of the narrative. Her
mind begins to take over with dreams of a forest, a magical and strange
encounter with herself and mushrooms. This leads us right out into George
Melies’ A Trip to the Moon and a visceral macrophotography timelapse of fungi
and it simply gets more and more surreal.
The sudden use of different mediums is not
the most jarring issue, however. It is the sudden abandonment of the main narrative,
which may lose some. We take a sharp turn with Ann focusing more on her own
supernatural abilities than on the work regarding the massacre.
We are left to wonder to our own
imagination certain parts as we are carried away by Anocha’s ethereal and
cosmic imagery. If you are able to carry on, the journey becomes wilder but if
you are not, then the film will begin to fall apart for you, especially once
the film recycles itself.
We are reintroduced to the opening scenes
at the rural cottage though now the main characters have changed but yet repeat
more or less the same lines. An echo of Apichatpong’s ‘Syndromes and a Century’
is present in this instance but quickly dissipates when it is clear the
repetition is not meant in the same way.
In the midst of this, a few laughs seem to
be readily available once we are repositioned into a tobacco factory and introduced
to Peter, (Arak Amornsupasiri) an actor that partakes in an amusing music video
sequence. Peter’s segment have little to do with the main narrative and is
expectedly disconnected.
The only connecting through line offered by
the film is through a magnetic young female character (Atchara Suwan) who
changes jobs constantly and appears as a side character to many of the main
narratives. As a waitress, a cleaner and
a monk, she is constantly apparent to the bigger stories and at the same time
distant. This is a loose connection to the theme; a display of the apathy of
young people towards historical and political events.
Regardless, the film remains engaging and
beguilingly beautiful without any need for real answers. The surrealism comes
to a climax at the end when Anocha transposes a montage of prayer halls to
nightclubs to stunning digital effect and finally melting away into reality. The impossible idea of creating a historical film in the face of apathy ultimately consuming itself with a grand finality.
Ultimately, 'By the Time it Gets Dark' is a careful examination on time,
memory, trauma and cinema. Constantly shape-shifting between fact and fiction,
from rural to cities, dreams, reality and films. However, all these things have somehow
been able to unite and coalesce into a
masterfully done reflection of a particular moment in history and its many
rippling effects.