The end is now

The end is now

The sixth — and final — instalment of the King Naresuan series is finally upon us, but what's most interesting about this film is its future place in Thai political history

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
The end is now
A scene from The Legend Of King Naresuan Part 6.

The final instalment of The Legend Of King Naresuan franchise is a surprisingly lean 100-minute tribute to the ancient king. It feels less overblown than the previous three parts (which each ran over two hours), with more compact storytelling and an unexpected sense of mournful panegyric. After eight years, countless delays, hiccups and political undercurrents, and a combined 800-million-baht receipt, the country's longest-running film project — a clumsy shot at militaristic patriotism that began four months after the 2006 coup d'etat and ends this month, in another post-coup period — is now over. But at least this epilogue finishes with a faint glimmer of grace that has been largely missing over the years.

Not that we're witnessing any sophisticated characterisation or historical wisdom. And for completists who've seen all six films, the experience is stuffy and overlong.

This last episode is titled The End Of Hongsa — a dramatic hyperbole, or even historical distortion — and we had shuddered at the prospect of chest-thumping triumphalism; I think one of the franchise's shortcomings is its inability to give us convincing and complex villainy (the Burmese kings and lords, who love theatricality and shouting). Their demise at the hands of the brave Ayutthaya soldiers are often set up as emotional high points. Part 6, however, is thankfully calm, sometimes even thoughtful, and there's a whiff of resigned contentment I believe can also describe the feeling of its director, MC Chatrichalerm Yukol.

Part 5 ended with King Naresuan (Col Wanchana Sawasdee, who grows over the years as if we were watching a 16th-century, Southeast Asian Boyhood) slaying the Burmese viceroy in an earth-shaking elephant duel. Part 6 follows the aftermath of the Burmese defeat, as King Nanda Bayin (Jakkrit Ammarat, in costumed histrionics) unleashes his fury against his own generals and soldiers, and even kills King Naresuan's sister, Princess Supan Kanlaya (Grace Mahadamrongkul), who has been held hostage in Hongsa. King Nanda Bayin flees to Taungoo, a city that remains his ally, as King Naresuan marches from Ayutthaya to tax revenge.

The details of these incidents have prompted historians to wince — was the Burmese viceroy actually killed on an elephant's back by King Naresuan's halberd? Was Hongsa really "ended", and if so, was it by the hands of the Ayutthaya soldiers?

As a cinema-goer, I don't feel the need to get hung up over any of this: the problem with the King Naresuan movies is not their (in)accuracy, but their textbook-like quality, rigid dramaturgy, false grandiloquence and an absence of emotional particulars that would have made these characters more human (and thus more interesting), instead of people from a distant past, whose names we heard in elementary school.

Part 6 is fairly better — the story moves faster and more nimbly, and the above shortcomings are less pointed. The human dimension has more breathing room here, seen for example in the final confrontation between King Naresuan and King Nanda Bayin, who has been portrayed mostly as a caterwauling megalomaniac, now reduced to an ugly, lonely despot. Other loose ends aren't tied up as tidily, such as the death of Princess Supan Kanlaya.

The usually stilted dialogue feels less so, though I wish it could be more reflective, more personal, given that this is the last time we'll be seeing these armour-clad people on-screen.

They say a movie is just a movie, and a franchise just franchise. But in the past eight years, is it? As a sprawling, dragging, ambitious, expensive epic, the King Naresuan series is an official attempt — successive governments have supported it — to bolster history at its most conservative.

The first film came out months after the 2006 coup; the fifth a week after the 2014 coup; and this final instalment has come out in an era of military government that prescribes national unity and forced happiness (from the start, coup spokesperson Winthai Suvaree has played Prince Ekathotsarot, King Naresuan's brother).

It's clear that the franchise's place in Thai cinema history is inseparable from its role in Thai political history. Years from now, these films will be judged, less from a filmmaking perspective, from which there isn't much to discuss, but more from a socio-political lens, which will hopefully shine a light on this bloated, strange and unique cultural specimen of our confusing times.

Col Wanchana Sawasdee as King Naresuan.

Do you like the content of this article?
COMMENT