Audio transcription
For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.
John Quackenbush 0:00
March 24, 2017. The Harvard Film Archive screened Mundane History. This is the recording of the introduction and the Q&A that followed. Participating are HFA Director Haden Guest and filmmaker Anocha Suwichakornpong.
Haden Guest 0:19
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Haden Guest. I'm Director of the Harvard Film Archive and it's a great, great pleasure to welcome tonight Anocha Suwichakornpong, who’s here to present the two films that announced the arrival of an ambitious new voice and vision into contemporary world cinema. Together Graceland—which is a 2006 MFA thesis film—and her celebrated feature debut from 2010, Mundane History, showcased the elliptical poetry of image and narrative that gives Suwichakornpong’s films such a suddenly mysterious yet lasting power. Mundane History offers an intertwined double portrait of two young men, each trapped in different and paradoxically symmetrical ways that signal the rich multiplicity of meaning that pervades this film. One might be tempted to find metaphor in the young man's predicament and the fact that the house they inhabit is owned and ruled by a taciturn father, a quietly threatening and paternalistic dictator of sorts. And yet one is also tempted to drift away from any stable meaning. Inspired by the oneiric and associative leaps that carefully destabilize the film with sudden explosions of pure and rapturous cinema. Abstract, pulsing images that interweave the cosmic and the domestic guided by sensual trance music.
Through its careful avoidance of melodrama, it's absolute minimization of character, Mundane History invites its viewer to always look elsewhere and to look differently, to focus on the smaller details, like the turtle that floats in its glass cage, or the charge objects in the boy's room that suggest a different story of stunted adolescence. The ultimate liquidity of time, space and meaning in Mundane History is curiously balanced by the weight and solidity of the smaller and seemingly mundane things, each with their own untold stories, or should I say histories.
Anocha Suwichakornpong comes to us tonight from Bangkok via New York City, where she received her MFA at Columbia University where she was recently celebrated just this past week in the New Directors New Films festival co-sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
I want to ask you all to please turn off any cell phones, any electronic devices that you have, and please do not use them at all during the screening. We will be having a conversation after Graceland and Mundane History, but now to say a few words. Please join me in welcoming Anocha Suwichakornpong.
[APPLAUSE]
Anocha Suwichakornpong 3:21
Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being here. Thank you Haden and thank you to Harvard Film Archive for inviting me and my films to be here. I’m very happy and very excited. Yeah, what can I say? Thank you for pronouncing my surname so well. I was very happy. I don't think I need to talk more about the films because you're about to see them. But actually I'm going to watch them with you, and I'll be back after the screenings, so you know, we can have more discussion if you have any questions, please stay behind. I'll be very happy to talk to you. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
John Quackenbush 4:09
And now Haden Guest
[APPLAUSE]
Haden Guest 4:22
Well, thank you so much, once again, for being with us tonight and for sharing these really wonderful films. I thought we could begin with the conversation here before taking questions, comments and responses from the audience.
Your short film Graceland begins with the Elvis impersonator asking “Where are we going?” And that's a question I think we might also ask as we're watching Mundane History. There's a sense of drift and a sort of floating quality to the film that I wanted to try to speak a bit about. Watching it now I'm just struck by the way it constantly seems to be starting again. We seem to be going back again and again and again and again. And then we’re drawn all the way back to this unexplained birth at the beginning. And that's one if you could speak about this starting again, because in some ways we could read it perhaps as the trauma that this young man is going through, but then the film at same time resists that and suggests a possible other direction, so...
Anocha Suwichakornpong 5:34
Yeah, I guess it's a lot to do with the political situation in Thailand at the time when I was writing the script. We shot it in 2008, and I finished the script maybe two years before that. So around 2006, we had a coup d'etat. And actually, it was one that was totally unexpected for a lot of people. Because, I mean, I don’t know, many of you may know that in Thailand, we have a lot of coup d’etats. And I was born the year there was one. And then it seemed like almost fifteen years [later], there was one. So that was when I was fifteen. There was one when I was thirty. So that was… Actually, yeah. The one in 2006 somehow came early, I guess, in a sense that it was not every fifteen years. It just happened. And I think in a way, the structure of the film… actually every fifteen minutes, something shifts. And maybe it seems like we're going backward, but actually the narrative does go forward, and it actually correlates to the reel of the film as well. One reel for my film is about fifteen minutes.
Haden Guest 7:17
We saw that on a great 35mm print, right.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 7:20
So I would say it’s like society is also a living thing. So it’s like a setback every fifteen years. And so the film is—among many other things—the political allegory of what has been happening in Thailand. So in that sense, I think it's fitting that it seems to be regressing.
Haden Guest 7:58
So this traumatic history that repeats and seems a kind of progression, but at the same time one that is constantly drawn back into the past, and yet at the same time, and certainly as I said at the beginning, there's a lot to suggest this. There’s the house itself, which seems to be both the sort of presidential mansion, prison and you know…. But there's something else too, these sort of vertical moments in the film, when we seem to enter into another film, beginning where the screen goes completely white and then we're in the 16 millimeter grainy, sort of home movie. And other times we're in this cosmological trance film. And I was wondering if we could talk about these moments that are integral to the film and yet seem to take us elsewhere. We have this character who is a frustrated filmmaker himself. And one way we could almost think of these as films that he's dreaming of.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 9:05
Yeah, actually, I hadn't thought about this before—because, you know, I screened these two films not that recently—and someone mentioned that, in a way, even though they're very different– But Graceland also has a bit of this quality in the scene where the young man, the Elvis impersonator, starts to dance, then it's like it's something very internal that takes you to another place in terms of a narrative. Yeah, we're transported to another place. And in Mundane History, that sequence when it becomes this sixteen millimeter footage, for me, it's actually the first time that as an audience, you would have some sort of access to this young man who is not particularly sympathetic as a character. But that is the first time you have a glimpse, access into something that up to that point is hidden. So it’s almost like a small access into this young man's internal world. It could be like a film that he wants to make, or I don't know, what do you think? What do you think it is? [LAUGHS]
Haden Guest 10:48
Well, no, I mean, this is this is an interesting question because there are times too that—particularly at the end—where there we have a sense of an inner world of subjectivity, but it seems almost as if it could be shared by the father, the trauma of the accident. When he's asked by the nurse about the accident, suddenly, we go to a shot of the father arriving in a car and then we go to the father's going up to the porch looking out, and then we go back to the hospital. So it seems there's a wonderful, ellipticality where this inner world seems to be one that's equally accessible to these different characters.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 11:33
And another thing is, I didn't want to– Okay, actually, maybe this is some kind of an answer to what you were asking before. But I didn't want to tell the story in– Causality, I guess, is subverted. So it's not cause and effect. And sometimes you will see the aftermath of something that already happened. Let’s say, the scene where the young man, he has a wound on his hand. And then later on, it seems as if he is about to break the glass. So I really wanted to subvert this. So that is, each moment is in itself significant. So that you don't only pay attention to what comes after or the effect rather than the cause. And I think it maybe has something to do with a Buddhist belief that I also wanted to subvert, I guess. Yeah, the idea of karma, which is also mentioned several times in the film. I don't necessarily believe in it, I guess.
Haden Guest 13:02
Could you tell us a bit more with the idea of karma that you are pushing against? Could you explain that more specifically?
Anocha Suwichakornpong 13:10
Well, because actually, the kind of Buddhism that we practice in Thailand is also you know, influenced by Hinduism, the gods and yeah, karma. I don't believe in that myself.
Haden Guest 13:35
So karma as a kind of fate, right? As a kind of destiny.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 13:37
Right. Right. Yeah. So everything is predestined, and no matter what you do you have just to follow your life, your path. For me, it seems… I don’t know. I don't have the word for it, but...
Haden Guest 14:02
Something you resist.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 14:04
Yeah. It’s so outdated, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. It's not fair actually.
Haden Guest 14:13
Well, certainly, we can see the way that this film resists and subverts the idea of a linear narrative, a narrative where the effect, the cause, is predicted within the image itself within the story of what we think of as conventional storytelling, and in that sense, resisting a kind of almost narrative karma, if we could say. And I think the furthest extreme of that is when we enter into this sort of universe, right? And when we enter into this, I was wondering if we could talk about these moments where suddenly we're out in the stars, because I'm really struck by the way, at times, it almost resembles an eye what we're seeing and then it seems to be a sun… So, we go to this inner world to this absolute sort of outer world.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 15:08
Yeah. Also I think it's to do with Hinduism, you know, the gods and the belief in astrology. Astronomy? Yeah. It’s on the one hand scientific, on the other hand it’s deeply religious. I wanted to bring the two to be on an equal plane. So they go to a planetarium, and so there's this scene about the supernova. But we actually, of course, as an audience, we witness it first before they do. Yeah, and actually, I should just mention that very soon after this film came out, The Tree of Life came out. It was exactly the same sequence, but I was happy that I finished mine before. [LAUGHS]
Haden Guest 16:14
Maybe Terrence Malick saw your film. [LAUGHS]
Anocha Suwichakornpong 16:16
He was making it for years and years, but I had no idea. Yeah. So but it was actually the same supernova even.
But no, it's just the idea of in Buddhism, I think it’s birth, growth, decay, and death; whereas I think in Hinduism, there is also the rebirth. So a star is a supernova– It’s like that also with all living things. And you go through this life cycle. The society is also a living thing.
Haden Guest 17:02
And yet, for this young man has partly his traumas that he's somewhere between the living and the dead, in a sense. The way he's trapped in this house, he's unable to fully move. And I was wondering if you could speak a bit about what drew you to this character, this predicament? I mean, yes, you spoke of this political metaphor, but I'm wondering if there are other ways we can think of it. I mean, I'm struck by the scenes where we're inside of the room, the camera seems to be sort of trembling. There’s this quality almost of, you know, his trauma has this kind of energy that's waiting to break out, and I guess I'm wondering if there's another way we can try to understand how you were drawn to this.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 17:56
Actually, it was something that my cinematographer and I talked [about] a lot, even before we shot the film, that I didn't want the film to consist of, mainly, all static shots, because actually, that would be the obvious choice because the protagonist has to stay in bed almost the whole time. But I wanted to give it a sense in the film that is another feeling. I kept using the word “punk'' when we were communicating. “Make a punk film,” you know, “Let's not do it the way that it should be. Let's try the other way.” But I think this camera movement also gives it the feeling that is more subjective. So it’s not like an observational camera, or that kind of filmmaking. And also, we actually talked about the house being one character. So sometimes we would have shots that it’s almost as if the house is spying on the characters in the film. And I think the other thing we talked about was this event horizon. I read that if you're being sucked into a black hole, the object or the person that is being sucked into a black hole actually will not realize what's happening to them. But if you're observing this, actually only others can see that that matter is disappearing. And I thought that was an interesting idea. So we tried to apply it in terms of cinematography when—I’m trying to think because this was some time back—but yeah, I think it goes with the idea of the house looking at these people in the household.
Haden Guest 20:31
There's also I feel like in the sense of the idea of losing Matt or I feel like these constant moments where we seem to be going back in the past, but it seems like it could have been a flashback where it seems, you know... and there's a moment where we're one of the characters at the end, where the nurse asks, “Is it possible to live without a past?” and it almost seems as if the film is asking that and exists in a kind of Faulknerian now where it's both past and present, or it’s past, present, future all sort of intermingled in a way so it's...
Anocha Suwichakornpong 21:12
Actually now I remember something. So, I actually wrote this script based on a short story, which I wrote years before and it was actually just a page, a very short story—almost like a diary entry—and the son actually is also the person who writes this diary entry. And it has this quality, it’s kind of like stream-of-consciousness writing. But when I decided to turn it into a script, of course, being in a screenplay format, it needed another kind of structure. I created more characters. But initially, it was more abstract in the short story. And then when it becomes this script, in that screenplay format, it became a lot more conventional. And so I shot the film, according to the script, but when we started to edit, like not right at the beginning, but a few drafts, then my editor and I started to deconstruct the film and then started from scratch. So we didn't edit it according to the script. Yeah. So it went back to its original form.
Haden Guest 22:50
And for both of these films,—as well as the film we'll see tomorrow—you work with the same editor, Lee Chatametikool. He was also the editor for Apichatpong Weerasethakul among others, and I was wondering if you could speak about your collaboration with him.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 23:10
We started working together for the first time on Graceland. And yeah, when I shot Mundane History, from the beginning, I knew that he was going to be the editor. So initially, he edited according to the script, which was more or less linear. And then at some point, I think three months into editing–. Okay, and now I remember... Quite early on when he watched the footage, he commented that, oh, there are a lot of repetitions in this film. And my cinematographer and I were like, “Of course, what do you think?” I mean, it was actually already a challenge to shoot because, you know, there's so many only so many angles you can do in the bedroom. So we were trying our best to have a variety of shots covering it from, you know, like to be a little bit more inventive. But yeah, so when my editor Lee commented that, I think it got stuck in my head. You know, he said “repetition.” And he I think he even jokingly said that, “Oh, you can actually just loop the film.” So, a few months later, the film already had like an assembly. And I felt that it could go further. There was something lacking. And I think actually it was maybe I felt more like the emotions were not quite there. IEven though it was like how it was written in the script, something was missing. And then one day I had this idea of I just said to him, “What if we don't start it from the beginning?” What if we started somewhere... not in the middle, but something like that. Like, yeah, it goes very Godard, saying, you know, the film doesn't—what does he say? You don't have to tell the story–
Haden Guest
Beginning, middle and end–
Anocha Suwichakornpong
Yeah, but not necessarily in that order. Yeah, very common, you know, known wisdom. But I thought about it. And I'm like, “Wait, what if we started somewhere else?” I think the audience is smart. You don't have to tell it from the beginning. So it's actually maybe it's better to start with emotion. So we throw the audience right into something. And then slowly, they will learn. They will figure out what has happened up to this point. So that's how it started, the idea. And I picked this scene where the nurse asked him if he could switch off the light, because I thought it'd be quite nice to prepare the audience as you enter into this dark darkness. And I don't know if it's boring, but we edited using index cards. So all these things were written on the index cards. And so in the beginning, Lee actually wasn't sure if it would work to deconstruct the film, and I wasn't sure either, but he actually said, “Oh, why don't you just try doing it, like rearranging these cards?” And, he went out of the room. He said, “You just try to do something with it. I'll come back. And I'll edit is like the way you put it in. We'll see if it works or not.” So I did. I rearranged the first fifteen minutes of the film. And then he edited accordingly. And then he watched it, and he said, “Actually, it might work.” And that's really how it started, the process. And so we kept going like that. We did another fifteen minutes, another fifteen minutes. But of course, we still had to shuffle around. And so the editing itself took six months after that. Yeah, it was very intense.
Haden Guest 28:00
Before we take questions from the audience, just to return to that first shot, because I agree with you, that's really key, the way you go from this inner world, the darkness, and suddenly to the room itself and his actual condition. But what's also great in that early moment is the way you you release the music and then you just stop it. I was wondering if we could just talk a little bit about this music, which is such a—how to describe it?—there’s a trance-like quality to the music, it just seems to sort of overwhelm….
Anocha Suwichakornpong
Which one?
Haden Guest
The soundtrack, the—
Anocha Suwichakornpong
There’s two main songs.
Haden Guest
There’s a song by Furniture...
Anocha Suwichakornpong 28:44
“The Photo Sticker Machine,” which is the one that's used in the turning-off-the-light scene. So the one that's used in the light turning off is a Thai band. And yeah, I think I was actually attracted to the lyrics of this song. The song is called “Are you sure?” and the lyrics go something like “How can you be certain that what you know is true?” Something like that? Yeah. It changes the idea of belief, I guess. I was primarily attracted to the lyrics. But the other song is by a Malaysian band called Furniture was used in the supernova scene and the birth at the end. That one is post-rock and then also actually I have to credit Lee for introducing me to this song, because one day he just played it in his office. And then I listened to it and I'm like, “Well, maybe this song would work.” Because it has this pyrotechnic quality about it. It starts off very small, and then it explodes. It gets bigger and bigger, gradually until it's almost like an explosion, which I think is fitting to the structure of the film—initially for the supernova, but then it became a structure of the film itself.
Haden Guest 30:32
Seeing this on 35 is a moment where almost looks like the film has burned. which is great.
Let's take questions or comments from the audience, if there are any questions or comments at all? Yeah, let's take a question from Becca right there. Steven, right there. Thanks. And we'll get to you after.
Audience 1 30:56
Thank you so much for such an interesting, beautiful film. I have a question about the actors. I found both of their performances really compelling, because there was a certain withholding quality, which rang very, very true for me, very genuine. But I'd be intrigued to hear if they were new to the screen, or if they are professional actors, and how you cast them or if they're friends. So yeah, to hear about the two men.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 31:24
Yeah, the young man never acted in a film before. He did some stage plays. I had open calls for actors, and he sent in his headshot, and he came to audition. I didn't know him before. Yeah, so it was really the normal process. And we were able to find him in good time. So we had quite a bit of time to rehearse, and actually, for research as well. We went to consult with the physical therapists, and he did a lot of training, which somehow didn't really end up so much in the film, because when shooting, I realized that I wanted to deal more with the emotion of the character—the emotional side rather than the fiscal side. But he did actually go through quite rigorous training. He's also a non-professional, I should say. Both of them are non-professionals. But the nurse had some small roles. He acted in an Apichatpong film before, but he had a minor role. So he actually has some experience, but not a whole lot. And he came to us quite late. We really could not find the right person for this role. At one point, I think only maybe a few weeks before we started shooting, someone recommended him to me and said, “Oh, why don't you try this guy?” and he came. But I did manage to have them spend some time together before we started shooting. Not so much because I didn't want them to be best buddies either. Yeah, so they did hang out like a day or two before we started shooting.
Haden Guest 33:39
There was a question over on this side, Steffen.
Audience 2 33:45
I’d like to compliment on the issue of karma because that is one of the key factors of why you know, I think he’s coming there because as you know, Thailand is a monarchist country. And the way to get the people to accept [UNKNOWN] hierarchies in the society is to get them not to question. So karma is an easy explanation for any unfortunate life and it has been in every explanation and because of karma, it stopped people from seeking truth. Because when people start seeking truth, you will hit the selling of the hierarchy of the society. I’m a political exile. So I think that Thailand is not a Buddhist country, but it's a country that is really built in traditional [UNKNOWN] mixed with Hinduism. And Buddhism has been virtually the [UNKNOWN]. If you follow Thailand, there is a bit of a battle in Thailand between the state and Buddhism. In order to control Buddhism, to be under the wing of the monarchy, there was always the battle of who decides the head of the bank in Thailand to continue to lead society, to not question any of the power play in the country. And so karma is not just about individuals, but it's the systematically decided [UNKNOWN] in order for monarchy to last the Islam in Thailand until now.
Haden Guest 35:36
Thank you for that contextualization. Let's take the– Oh, I'm sorry. You have a question? Yeah, go ahead.
Audience 3 35:43
Yeah. So to follow up, I thought that was a really good way to highlight the class differences. It's very hard to watch this film, I've watched it six times now. It’s still very hard to watch because it's so tense, right? You're very on edge. But I do appreciate it in the class difference. And the explanation of karma is really relevant. So thank you for that. Maybe if you have time to talk about those class differences?
Haden Guest 36:12
Do you want to talk about class in the film, because certainly there’s servants below and….
Anocha Suwichakornpong 36:18
I think it’s quite apparent. There’s like this upstairs/downstairs thing. I don't know. Does anyone want to comment? I thought it was quite apparent, so I would not like so much to talk about it unless somebody would like to comment or...?
Haden Guest 36:40
Let's take the question from the gentleman in the very back. Yes, please. Thank you.
Audience 4 36:52
I have a question. I wonder if you could comment about the kind of homosocial intimacy or a kind of queerness, a sense of queerness in the film, because at some point, you know, audiences kind of expect a kind of homosocial bond to be developed at some point, but you make it into a kind of like, queerness not as a social issue, but a kind of existential issue in some way, or how it become integrated to a kind of political allegory. You know, somehow so I wonder if you could comment on that a little bit. Thank you.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 37:32
To be absolutely honest, I don't know how to answer that question. And this is not something that I thought of myself, but it has been brought to my attention that is like this quality of queerness in my film. To be absolutely honest, it was not something that I'm conscious of. But then again, I don't know, it’s a film about male psyche, among other things, and patriarchy. And but I think that the gaze is not so male. I think it's a very female gaze, looking at the bodies... So I don't really know how to answer this question. What do you think? Do you have any thoughts?
Audience 4 38:49
What I think about, you know, because Thailand is also well known for kind of like queer country, in a way, it's the way that it becomes eroticized in various visual representation or something like that. But the way that I think of queer film, such as Apichatpong and also your film, so many other independent filmmakers, is to make queer into a kind of political or existential in a way and in not really just a kind of healing or therapeutic discourse of queerness or about coming out to be out as queer but using queer as a kind of a tool to redirect, I don't know, issues or political and religious issues or something like that.
Anocha Suwichakornpong 39:42
Yeah, I think maybe this film can be read that way. But I think maybe it's just this one in my body of work. The one that's showing tomorrow is quite different. Well, I don't know. Because when I finished this one, then I started to develop the second film, and I wanted to deal this time with women. So the film that's showing tomorrow is about women. And so, yeah, maybe it will not be read as queer. Yeah.
Haden Guest 40:23
I mean, I actually appreciate that point a lot though, because I feel like when we speak about queer cinema today, or queerness, it also has to do with form and the way in which I think—like in Apichatpong’s films, the films of Alain Guiraudie as well as João Pedro Rodrigues, for example—the way the form itself changes and the way the forms within the film change the relationship and the constant mutation of bodies. And it seems to me in this film too, the ways in which this close-up of the bruised body seems to be almost entering into this kind of cosmos, or the way in which the turtle and the boy seem to have a kind of oneness. And so not just reading it literally, but actually thinking in terms of, as something bigger as a constant transformation of potential and simultaneity of difference. I feel like that's another way in which, I think, perhaps operates within the sort of queer logic or...
Anocha Suwichakornpong 41:32
No, but it's definitely been mentioned before.
Haden Guest 41:36
Yeah, I think it is a significant. So other comments or questions at all? Yes, we have one right here in the middle.
Audience 5 41:46
I was wondering why the opening sequence was so long. Because, yeah, so we open with a very close-up of his face, and the music is very, very loud. And then, you know, we're introduced to the characters, and we get a lot of—I thought—we get a lot of narrative. And then we have sort of the information about different people who are involved in the making of the film, and then we go into the film proper. But by the time I saw the information about the people, I thought, “Oh, is this the end?”
Haden Guest
Oh, the credit sequence.
Audience 5
Right, right, right. And that really struck me as an audience member. And I wondered what you were doing by that/
Anocha Suwichakornpong 42:29
Again, this is kind of like what Haden was saying, it’s almost as if it's regressing, even though it functions as both—like, actually, seemingly it goes back to the beginning. But then, in another way, it also goes forward. It's very hard to describe. I think that credit sequence really came after fifteen minutes into the film. And by this point, we already meet the characters, and we know a little bit about them. But for me, it doesn't matter where the opening credits are, actually, I mean, it could be right in the beginning as most films are, but it could also be there. Yeah, if you take that out, it still will be okay, but you know, for me, it doesn't matter really.
Haden Guest 43:42
Okay, well, I'd like to ask you to please join me in thanking Anocha Suwichakornpong and we will be back tomorrow with By the Time It Gets Dark. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
©Harvard Film Archive
