When I attended the 20th
anniversary screening of Eric Khoo’s 12 Storeys (1997) at the Projector,
I was expecting a near full house, and I wasn’t disappointed. This is because
one of the best things that recent films such as Apprentice, A Yellow
Bird, and Pop Aye, have done is draw the Singapore audience’s
attention back to Singapore film. While 12 Storeys may have been
something of a cult classic in its time, today it holds a much more important
place in SG film history now that more people are realizing SG film goes back
far beyond the slapstick army comedy of today.
Khoo is best known for Mee
Pok Man (1995) and 12 Storeys - both of which are considered to have
revived the film industry, bringing forth a Singapore New Wave after somewhat
staggered film production in the 60s and 70s. 12 Storeys was the first
Singaporean film to go to the Cannes Film Festival, creating a pioneer
‘Singaporean’ voice on the International film festival platform. The
significance of this moment cannot be understated because prior to this, for
the international community, a ‘Singaporean’ cinema was almost nonexistent. In
this context, it’s fair to say 12 Storeys started Singapore’s dialogue
with the international stage — a dialogue which subsequent filmmakers have
evolved and sophisticated to a remarkable degree over the last two decades.
Watching this film in
2017, at the Projector no less (the cinema itself being a ‘revived’
institution), it’s hard to dismiss the profound influence such a film has had
in allowing filmmakers of today to speak with a significant degree of honesty
about the faults in Singapore’s systems. This film takes arguably Singapore’s
most iconic success story, the HDB, as its central motif, only to turn it on
its head to reveal the darker anxieties embedded amongst the residents within.
Poorly lit, cramped, and dirty, the HDB block of 12 Storeys looks
remarkably different from the HDB block of your town council’s racial harmony
banner. Moreover, at many instances throughout the film, the whole frame is
filled with the HDB block such that it acquires a kind of ominous endlessness.
This film is often
described as a "dark comedy", but I would say it leans more on the
side of "dark" than "comedy". The story-line that does
strike the perfect balance, however, is the one with the teacher who has an
unhealthy obsession with his younger sister's "delinquent" sex life.
Depicted as a faultlessly upright citizen, who unfailingly does the Singapore
workout every morning, it would have been almost too easy to turn this
character's obedience and filial piety into a joke.
Instead, in moments where the teacher interacts with his younger siblings, exasperatedly trying to communicate the importance of having a good work ethic, which only falls on deaf ears, it's hard not to sympathise with him. After all, from his perspective, he is only looking out for their well-being. In the scene where the teacher interacts with his sister's "boyfriend", Khoo uses humour to highlight the absurdity of this character's overbearingly protective nature. When his own obsession with obedience and order drives him to madness by the end of the film, so much so that he ends up getting arrested, the point being made is loud and clear : what is the use of unquestioning obedience if even morally upright “perfect” citizens end up behind bars?
For what the film
achieves, there were also a few significant aspects that could have been
handled with more sensitivity. For instance, the storyline of the man who
brings a wife from China was almost unbearably annoying at many instances. The
humor was slapstick, and the intention to make this man look “pitiful” too obvious
(I mean, we all know Jack Neo isn’t really buck-toothed).
This storyline looked into the relevant issue of mail-order brides, and it
could have benefited well from the same sort of sensitivity as with the teacher’s
storyline. Additionally, the suicide in the beginning of the film, with the
ghost hanging around, came across as more of an afterthought than a
storytelling device. Perhaps the ghost could have linked all the stories
together, or perhaps more could have been said about the issue of suicide.
At this point, however, it
seems almost unnecessary to pick at the film’s narrative flaws, for what it has
achieved on an industrial level by existing is more than enough. In a country
rife with censorship, the critical support and appeal of this film ensured that
filmmakers in the future can continue to probe and question institutional
systems, something which any filmmaker should be free to do if both the
cultural and social fabric of a society is to mature. Watching this film today
was a useful glimpse of where SG cinema has come from, and where it ought to go
next.
12 Storeys is available for purchase or rent on iTunes Singapore. This the highly commendable work of A Little Seed, a local film aggregator started by local filmmaker and founder of Mocha Chai Laboratories Chai Yee Wei. Some of the other film titles on the iTunes list include Anthony Chen’s Ilo Ilo, Boo Junfeng's Sandcastle, Ken Kwek's Unlucky Plaza and Royston Tan’s 7 Letters Anthology.
Review by Tanvi Rajvanshi
For the full list of October 2017's 10 films under STOP10, click here.