Northern exposure

MOVIE Preview

- The Elephant King Directed by Seth Grossman Opening January 15

A scene from Elephant King, a feature film shot almost entirely on location in and around Chiang Mai.

A young New Yorker travels to Chiang Mai on a research grant and quickly loses himself in drink, drugs and loose women. Sound familiar? Substitute gender, nationality and mission as needed, and this plot could be about many of us foreigners who arrive in Thailand intent on noble causes and then find ourselves a bit distracted.

On January 15, The Elephant King, a feature film that was shot almost entirely on location in and around the northern city in January and February 2005, will finally be released to theatres in Chiang Mai and Bangkok. A number of Chiang Mai residents, including myself, were swept up in the production as extras, technical advisers, location providers or simple onlookers. Naturally we're all keen to view the results.

One of the tasks I undertook for DeWarrenne Pictures was finding a local band to perform behind Thai actor Pawalit "Bank" Mongkolpisit (the original Bangkok Dangerous and Som & Bank) during several scenes set inside the infamous Bar Beer Center.

I introduced director Seth Grossman to Nyok, alt-rocker regulars at Heaven Beach and Drunk Studio, and he agreed they were perfect for the role. At that point, I became the movie band's temporary manager, delivering the music for the four songs (three American, one Thai) required by the script, arranging rehearsals at Drunk Studio, and loaning Bank two guitars from my own modest collection.

Bank (who sings and plays rhythm guitar in the film) and Nyok performed so well during their scenes together that the producers scrapped their original plan to re-record the songs in Bangkok or New York, and instead left the audio tracks as recorded during filming.

Kudos to Nyok, who put a lot of time into preparing for their scenes, and then found themselves shooting pool for hours with Bank at the Bar Beer Center while waiting for camera and lighting adjustments.

One of the primary characters in The Elephant Kingis Chiang Mai itself. A montage of muddy city walls and steaming moats, 7-Elevens and abandoned housing estates, Space Bubble disco and Wat Chet Yot, night markets and old wooden houses, the city's paradoxical grit and grace have never before been so well-captured in any feature film, Thai or international. The script in fact turns Chiang Mai into a microcosm of Thailand, thrusting Western stereotypes about the country to the fore - and then turning them inside out.

But the core story isn't about Chiang Mai or Thailand at all, but about Jake (Jonno Roberts) and Oliver (Tate Ellingham), two brothers locked in a bully-victim relationship that both are struggling to transcend. Expatriate life in Chiang Mai, and their competing love for the same bargirl (Florence Vanida Faivre) merely serve as catalysts for the relationship to achieve its bloody catharsis.

Several parts of the film, including the opening sequence, were shot in New York and include memorable performances from Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream, When A Man Loves A Woman) and Josef Sommer (The Enemy Within, An American Story), playing the brothers' parents. As a father envious of his sons' carousing in Thailand, Sommer provides several of the film's best comedic moments. Burstyn shines during her time on film, playing the weepy, overly-doting mother with textbook technique.

Because co-producer DeWarrenne Pictures is a Thai-registered company, the screenplay did not need advance government approval. This means we get an unvarnished - if somewhat Western-orientated - look at Thai culture and society.

The film pegs Grossman - an NYU film grad who loosely based the movie on his own experiences living in Chiang Mai as a Princeton-in-Asia scholar six years ago - as something of a storytelling genius. Grossman's art film attitude - thankfully more substance than pose - is ably assisted by the intense cinematography of Diego Quemada, a disciple and close associate of camera wunderkind Rodrigo Prieto of 21 Grams fame.

On its two-year sojourn on the film festival circuit, The Elephant King collected several awards, including Best Film (2007 Sacramento Film Festival; 2008 Oxford Film Festival), Best Actor (2007 Brooklyn Film Festival), Outstanding Musical Score (2007 Sacramento Film Festival) and Best Impact of Music in a Feature Film (2008 Park City Film Music Festival).