Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Last Life in the Universe was the last film I managed to see at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival. And I’m really glad I caught it: it was one of those rare films that, like the early works of Godard, or certain works by Wong Kar-Wai, made me excited about the potentialities of cinema. Or, to put the point a bit less pompously: not only was it a good film, but it renewed my sense of film in general, by making me feel that all sorts of things are possible, that the form has not exhausted itself, that cinema still needs to be invented, and still can be.
(There’s a link to Wong Kar Wai, in that his frequent cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, also did the camerawork for this film. But Ratanaruang’s sensibility is very different from Wong’s).
The plot, in itself, isn’t particularly original or surprising: a nerd meets a voluptuous woman who renews him sexually, and expands his enjoyment of life. But this familiar set-up is barely more than a pretext.
For one thing, the characters are weirdly quirky. The nerd, Kenji (Tadanobu Asano) is a Japanese man living in Bangkok and working as a librarian for the Japan Society. He is obsessively neat and tidy, and he is always trying to commit suicide, but never succeeding, because the doorbell rings or the phone rings or people come by and stop him. The woman, Noi (Sinitta Boonyasak) is Thai, works as a “hostess” (i.e a prostitute) and is the opposite of neat: her house is a virtual pigsty, with unwashed dishes, stuff all over the floor, etc. They are brought together when siblings of both are killed: Kenji’s brother by the yakuza, and Noi’s sister in a car accident after they have quarreled.
For another thing, Ratanaruang is more concerned with cinematic action and grace than with naturalistic plausibility in terms of plot. He moves effortlessly between comedy and melodrama, dwelling on instants when nothing dramatic is happening beyond the revelation of the characters, and moving the plot through absurdist twists and turns.
But what makes Last Life in the Universe great goes beyond the quirkiness of the characters and the plot twists; it has to do with the style of the film. Nearly every set-up is surprising and unexpected, in terms of camera placement, framing, or colors. The result is a strange kind of distancing: not any sort of alienation-effect, but an effort to take us outside the characters, so that we can view them, and their world, from an angle we’ve never experienced before. (Can an “angle” be “experienced”? I may be writing clumsily here, but the film actually convinced me that such a thing is possible). Rather than “identifying” with the characters, we are led to feel affectionately about them from a distance, as if we were friendly visitors from another planet (or as if, I am tempted to say, we were cinema spectators).
Also, continuity is frequently violated, because Ratanaruang is more concerned with emotional expression than with literal narrative coherence. When Noi falls asleep with her head in Kenji’s lap, for instance, the clothes she is wearing change from one shot to the next; including one series of shots where she is wearing the clothes her sister had on when she died (a death that Kenji witnessed; and it was this now-dead sister upon whom Kenji had first had a crush).
Other times, the film just takes off into the stratosphere. When Kenji, with his obsessive neatness and cleanliness fetish, insists on cleaning up Noi’s house, all of a sudden there’s a scene where we don’t actually see him cleaning; instead, we see the books and papers and other objects scattered all over the floor magically flying back, en masse, to their places in the cabinets and shelves. Noi first looks startled and uneasy that this is happening; but then she starts dancing, gracefully, in the midst of the flurry. Books and papers flit and twirl around her, as if in a gentle whirlpool. The camera observes, coolly, from a middle distance.
It’s unclear whether Noi and Kenji ever actually get it on; it’s implied that they do, once, but the camera does not show it. And the end of the film makes it undecidable how much of what we have seen has actually happened, and how much is fantasy (Kenji’s probably, but perhaps Noi’s as well).
Last Life in the Universe doesn’t exhibit either the exhilaration of early Godard, nor the melancholy romanticism of Wong; but it has an affect of its own that is as moving and impressive as either of these. It’s a kind of pleasurable coolness and lightness, sometimes flickering with quicksilver rapidity, other times mellowly dwelling on minute details (more for the sheer enjoyment of them than for any further significance they might have). Call it a sort of playful aestheticism, detached enough not to be momentous or anything, but adhesive enough to make you feel glad you are alive.
Last Life in the Universe
Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Last Life in the Universe was the last film I managed to see at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival. And I’m really glad I caught it: it was one of those rare films that, like the early works of Godard, or certain works by Wong Kar-Wai, made me excited about the potentialities of cinema. Or, to put the point a bit less pompously: not only was it a good film, but it renewed my sense of film in general, by making me feel that all sorts of things are possible, that the form has not exhausted itself, that cinema still needs to be invented, and still can be.
(There’s a link to Wong Kar Wai, in that his frequent cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, also did the camerawork for this film. But Ratanaruang’s sensibility is very different from Wong’s).
The plot, in itself, isn’t particularly original or surprising: a nerd meets a voluptuous woman who renews him sexually, and expands his enjoyment of life. But this familiar set-up is barely more than a pretext.
For one thing, the characters are weirdly quirky. The nerd, Kenji (Tadanobu Asano) is a Japanese man living in Bangkok and working as a librarian for the Japan Society. He is obsessively neat and tidy, and he is always trying to commit suicide, but never succeeding, because the doorbell rings or the phone rings or people come by and stop him. The woman, Noi (Sinitta Boonyasak) is Thai, works as a “hostess” (i.e a prostitute) and is the opposite of neat: her house is a virtual pigsty, with unwashed dishes, stuff all over the floor, etc. They are brought together when siblings of both are killed: Kenji’s brother by the yakuza, and Noi’s sister in a car accident after they have quarreled.
For another thing, Ratanaruang is more concerned with cinematic action and grace than with naturalistic plausibility in terms of plot. He moves effortlessly between comedy and melodrama, dwelling on instants when nothing dramatic is happening beyond the revelation of the characters, and moving the plot through absurdist twists and turns.
But what makes Last Life in the Universe great goes beyond the quirkiness of the characters and the plot twists; it has to do with the style of the film. Nearly every set-up is surprising and unexpected, in terms of camera placement, framing, or colors. The result is a strange kind of distancing: not any sort of alienation-effect, but an effort to take us outside the characters, so that we can view them, and their world, from an angle we’ve never experienced before. (Can an “angle” be “experienced”? I may be writing clumsily here, but the film actually convinced me that such a thing is possible). Rather than “identifying” with the characters, we are led to feel affectionately about them from a distance, as if we were friendly visitors from another planet (or as if, I am tempted to say, we were cinema spectators).
Also, continuity is frequently violated, because Ratanaruang is more concerned with emotional expression than with literal narrative coherence. When Noi falls asleep with her head in Kenji’s lap, for instance, the clothes she is wearing change from one shot to the next; including one series of shots where she is wearing the clothes her sister had on when she died (a death that Kenji witnessed; and it was this now-dead sister upon whom Kenji had first had a crush).
Other times, the film just takes off into the stratosphere. When Kenji, with his obsessive neatness and cleanliness fetish, insists on cleaning up Noi’s house, all of a sudden there’s a scene where we don’t actually see him cleaning; instead, we see the books and papers and other objects scattered all over the floor magically flying back, en masse, to their places in the cabinets and shelves. Noi first looks startled and uneasy that this is happening; but then she starts dancing, gracefully, in the midst of the flurry. Books and papers flit and twirl around her, as if in a gentle whirlpool. The camera observes, coolly, from a middle distance.
It’s unclear whether Noi and Kenji ever actually get it on; it’s implied that they do, once, but the camera does not show it. And the end of the film makes it undecidable how much of what we have seen has actually happened, and how much is fantasy (Kenji’s probably, but perhaps Noi’s as well).
Last Life in the Universe doesn’t exhibit either the exhilaration of early Godard, nor the melancholy romanticism of Wong; but it has an affect of its own that is as moving and impressive as either of these. It’s a kind of pleasurable coolness and lightness, sometimes flickering with quicksilver rapidity, other times mellowly dwelling on minute details (more for the sheer enjoyment of them than for any further significance they might have). Call it a sort of playful aestheticism, detached enough not to be momentous or anything, but adhesive enough to make you feel glad you are alive.