With creative endeavours of Thai New Wave, Suwichankornpong takes the socio-political history of Thailand, including the concept of Moksha and spends all its time with a group of theatre troupe in their mid-twenties whose trip to Kanchanaburi turns hypnotic. They record their experience in the ghostly landscape, detached from place and time. The narrative keeps getting lost in the dark just like the characters and what happened to the missing space, history, memory and dreams is what the film tries to tell, with the use of arthouse aesthetics. This is the kind of arthouse film I'd like to support more. Ultimately, I found this to be mediocre rather than overwhelming. It has very little to say just like many other films from the genre and never reveals too much. It could have been a better experience but the inert sensibilities and subplots are less interesting with the abstract genre shifts in the narrative.
Though Anocha Suwichakornpong is very much her own, she is fairly looked as a Walmart version of compatriot Apichatpong Weerasethakul and I don't find it wrong as Anocha herself has admitted it. I am also of the opinion that her films had been mercilessly undervalued for far too long in the arthouse community. But i have seen so many comments recently basking in love and appreciation for her collaboration with Ben Rivers. She totally deserves every second of it and we cannot run away from that fact she is a very important part in the Thai arthouse realm along with Tulapop Saenjaroen, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, Wisit Sasanatieng, Banjong Pisanthanakun, Chatrichalerm Yukol, Chookiat Sakveerakul, Mingmonkul Sonakul, Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Sompot Chidgasornpongse, Pom Bunsermvicha and others.
To conclude, as a fan of Thai New Wave cinema this was full of mixed feelings. Regardless, it was impossible to give up for it's ambitious making but i will be lying if i labelled this as an experimental masterpiece.
