BAYTONG (Thailand, 2003) - New York Premiere
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| 103 minutes, 35mm, in Thai with English subtitles |
Showtimes: FRI June 25 - 6:00pm; SAT June 26 - 2:00pm [BUT TICKETS] |
| A last-minute addition to our schedule, but a film so powerful that we couldn't let it pass us by. The director of the Thai supernatural blockbuster, Nang Nak, helms this intensely emotional film about how one lives in a world full of terrorism and pain. A young Buddhist monk, Tum (Poowarit Poompuang), leaves the monastery, where he's spent all his life, to look after his niece when his sister is killed in a terrorist attack on a train. Moving to the largely-Muslim south of Thailand, Tum tries to navigate the ways of this fallen world: figuring out how to avoid the temptations of the flesh, how to live among the people whom he considers responsible for killing his sister, and how to zip up his fly without castrating himself. Tum's brilliant comic performance anchors this film, and the movie moves from humor to heartbreak as he forms attachments to the physical world that, invariably, cause pain and suffering. But suffering is the price of living with other people. Told with a deep humanity, in the gentle spirit of Korea's Christmas in August, this flick is an emotional "how to" manual on living with other humans. We may kill, we may torture, we may hate, but in the end we have no choice: we have to learn to live with one another, or die. |
