The romanticisation of scars

The romanticisation of scars

The new adaptation of the classic novel Plae Kao is a case study of the awkward relationship between the now and the nostalgic

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
The romanticisation of scars

Is it fair to compare art? To compare, with the case at hand, the new movie version of Plae Kao (The Scar) with the movie version of Plae Kao, out in 1977 and still remembered (even revered) as a classic?

Plae Kao

Starring Chaiyapol Julien Poupart, Davika Hoorne. Directed by ML Pundhevanop Dhevakul.

“Fair” is an unfair word. Perhaps “inevitable” is more inevitable. In both films, the lovers of Bang Kapi paddies frolic in the limpid canal as their handsomely-horned buffaloes sulk. In both films, the peasant life and the animist-Buddhist beliefs are on full display, as the rural-urban tension signals the seismic change of old Siam. But of course there are gaps between the two versions of Plae Kao — the biggest is neither the classical quality nor the believability of the actors. What distinguishes the two films is the gap between the way the people of each period remember and perceive the years that came before them, the gap that defines the relationship between the now and the nostalgic.

Both Plae Kao films, made 37 years apart, are based on the same source, the 1936 novel by Mai Muangderm, which tells of a doomed, Romeo-and-Juliet-like love story between Kwan and Riam. In the 1977 version directed by Cherd Songsri, young Sorapong Chatree plays Kwan, an honest, cocky farm boy who’s deeply in love with Riam (Nantana Ngao-krachang), a girl from a rival clan. Riam’s father hates Kwan’s father, and he sells his own daughter off to a rich aristocrat in Bangkok. Through a series of coincidences and fate, years later Riam would reunite with Kwan in a tragic encounter at the Banyan Shrine by the water where the young lovers once swore their undying love.

In the 2014 version directed by ML Pundhevanop Dhevakul, two Belgian-Thai stars play the leads: Chaiyapol Julien Poupart is Kwan, and Davika Hoorne is Riam. Much has been said about their “believability” — two half-blooded actors playing the most Siamese of roles, those of peasant teenagers weathered by farm chores and poverty. I don’t have problems with their ethnic make-up. I don’t even have a problem with the film’s weird stylistic choice to over-dye paddy fields into hyper-coloured expanses.

Nevertheless, what makes the new Plae Kao awkward and airless — even theatrical in parts, though nothing like Baz Luhrmann’s re-gestation of The Great Gatsby or Romeo + Juliet — is because in the span of 37 years between this film and the 1977 version (and 78 years from the original novel), the past has receded so far back, sucked into the ephemeral horizon, and thus a way to bring it back is through the bourgeoisie lens of nostalgic glorification. From the strangely coloured fields, the simulated rice farming, the gentrified temple fair, the pre-World War II nationalistic fervour — the past is willed into existence here, instead of just existing.

In the 1977 film, you smell the sweat on Sorapong’s face and feel the grime on his peasant nails — not necessarily because he’s a better actor than Chaiyapol, but because the idea of buffaloes, of rice paddies, of a canal by a village, of barnyard romance and a literal roll in the hay wasn’t so unfamiliar back then. There’s an indefatigable sense of honesty (I’m not saying “authenticity”) in that film version; the Bang Kapi field where the lovers savour their moment doesn’t feel like an imagination, certainly not a nostalgia. The psychological distance between the present and the past wasn’t so vast back then.

I’m not talking about the physical year according to the calendar. It doesn’t mean that we can’t make a film about the 18th century or 19th century or 10th century just because 2014 is so far away from those years. The distance of the past doesn’t matter as much as how that distance informs and shapes our present thinking.

The 1977 Plae Kao, a period film at the time of its release, makes sense because Kwan and Riam walk and talk like farmers — their body language, their diction, their comfort at being one with the muddy canal. Their story didn’t need to be analysed or interpreted — as it is with heavy-handedness in the new version. The class conflict, the rural-urban tension, and the cynicism of Bangkok nobles are played out with integrity and candour; whereas in the new version, the past, the agricultural tableau and the fatal romance come across like a series of objects that are paraded out and scrutinised by the present-day artist in awe with his own project (meanwhile the part about Siam’s role in the Indochina scuffles of the 1930s, added in to provide “context” of the changing world, is an auteur touch but also a distraction).

Of course, masterpieces can be remade, retouched, re-interpreted — it’s just not possible to decontextualise it and treat the new as if it existed in a void, or as if the audience has no clues about cinema history. The symptom of treating the past with romantic wistfulness isn’t new or exclusive to the 2014 Plae Kao; it’s actually been around since the rise of the middle-class audience at the time of the Thai film “renaissance” in the mid-1990s, from Dang Bireley And Young Gangsters (1997) to Nang Nak (1999), from Fan Chan (2003) to Suriyothai (2001), as well as ML Pundhevanops’s own Jan Dara (2011). To outfox this nostalgic trap, some filmmakers, in dealing with stories set in the past, deliberately alter its dimension and toy with our concept of time — such as the post-modern Tears Of The Black Tiger (2000), the ambiguous decade in Monrak Transistor (2001), or the cool anachronism of Pee Mak Phrakanong (2013).

Sure, the new Plae Kao is made for the present — meaning for the young, urban or urbanised audiences whose image of the buffalo-infested past is so vague, so unreal that they need hyper-vivid romanticism in order to believe in it. It’s good that the past isn’t forgotten, but what’s more important is how we remember it. Is it fair to compare art? Sometimes, resoundingly, unfortunately, yes.

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