6ixtynin9 (***)

Ruang Talok 69 (เรื่องตลก 69)
Thailand, 1999, 115 minutes
Directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Cast: Lalita Panyopas, Sirisin Siripornsmathikul, Prompop Lee, Surapong Mekpongsathorn, Tasanawalai Ongartittichai, Black Phomtong, Sritao, Arun Wannarbodeewong

On the heels of rewatching Pen-Ek Raranaruang's 2003 masterpiece Last Life in the Universe (aka Ruang Rak Noi Nid Mahasan or เรื่องรัก น้อยนิด มหาศาล), I discovered the director's earlier black comedy 6ixtyni9 (Ruang Talok 69, 1999) - thanks to also discovering that I got free movies on the Sundance Channel as part of Comcast's Digital On Demand service. I've never understood all the channels I get on digital cable, boorishly confining my viewing to Turner Classic Movies, MSNBC, the two all-soccer channels (Fox and Gol TV), and The Tennis Channel. But, considering my outrageous monthly cable bill, I'm going to have to take advantage of all the free movies I found listed On Demand.

This movie is far froma masterpiece, with its tone fluctuating unevenly between comedy and drama, but it has a fine performance by lead Lalita Panyopas and shows the early but as-yet-unrefined promise of a developing auteur in search of the stylistic flourishes that would finally come to fruition in 2003's Last Life in the Universe.

I read a review on the wonderful Twitch website that sums it up better than my words could:

As any fan of Asian film can tell you there are two major film producing countries on the rise right now. While Hong Kong is trying to fight their way out of a massive industry decline triggered by the reversion to Chinese rule and Japan seems content to hold steady the film cultures of Korea and Thailand have exploded to the forefront, both in terms of quantity and quality of the films being produced. And without a doubt one of Thailand’s brightest lights is writer / director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang.

Ratanaruang exploded onto the international scene with the absolutely stunning Last Life in the Universe, a film sensation that triggered a rush to track down his earlier works. Monrak Transistor – his 2001 effort – was still in print and easy enough to come by, but 1999’s 6ixtynin9 proved much more elusive with only a grainy Hong Kong produced VCD edition available on a fairly limited basis. But 6ixtynin9 proved to be one of those little films that just wouldn’t go away. Lauded in its own country – the film was Thailand’s Oscar submission that year – it tended to win converts whenever someone was lucky enough to track a copy down and it continued to grow in reputation until the good folks at Palm Pictures picked up rights for a North American release.

But enough of the background. What about the film? Lalita Panyopas stars as Tum, a low ranking employee in a Bangkok financial services firm – an industry sector that has been hit hard by an economic recession. Tum arrives at work one morning to find an impromptu staff meeting in session. The firm has been forced to lay off three employees and, unwilling to single anyone out for termination, the unlucky trio is decided by drawing lots. Tum, of course, is one of the unlucky three sent packing. This places her in a horrible situation. She has been financially supporting her parents and younger siblings and is now a single woman with no support network and little to no chance of finding legitimate work in the midst of the current hard times. Faced with the real prospect of having to turn to prostitution to make ends meet Tum begins shoplifting and fantasizing about suicide. Until one morning she discovers a box left outside her door, a box full of money, and sees a possible way out for herself. Here enters the continual case of mistaken identity brought on by a faulty apartment door number (the film’s title is a play on this), rival gangs, illegal passports, dope smoking youth, over exuberant police officers, nosy neighbors, an amputation and rather a lot of blood.

The summary makes 6ixtynin9 sound like a fairly busy, high energy film but like all of Ratanaruang’s other films it is actually a very quiet, meditative piece. Much like Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Ratanaruang loves to dress his films up in genre convention when they are actually psychological mood pieces. The gangsters are window dressing, what really matters here is that Tum is a woman in an incredibly difficult situation with some harsh moral decisions to make. How will she bear up under the stress? What path will she choose? The obvious point of comparison is Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave – a film that shares several significant plot points – but where Boyle’s film revolves around issues of greed Ratanaruang’s turns on desperation. How far are you willing to go to survive?

Key to making the film work is Panyopas’ performance as Tum and she does an admirable job charting Tum’s progression from a woman caught up by forces beyond her control into becoming one of those forces herself. She is giving very little dialogue to work with and has to rely on body language, frequently carrying her character entirely through her eyes. She has a quiet sense of grace and strength to her, more than enough to allow you to buy into the wildly excessive situation Ratanaruang drops her in to.

Where the film struggles a little bit is in the balancing of humor with the darker, more serious elements. Ratanaruang has a bit of a dreamer in him, as well as a healthy dose of absurdism, and he struggled to mesh those impulses with the ‘real-world’ feeling he also wants to maintain in his films until he finally struck a perfect balance with Last Life. There are some awkward moments here where you can tell he’s aiming for humor but the situation is paced and played just a little too realistically to laugh, and also some character moments that just don’t seem to fit with the tone of the rest of the film. Which is not to say that 6ixtynin9 isn’t a good film – it is, very – but fans of Last Life will need to approach this as an example of a master still learning and experimenting with his craft rather than coming in expecting the degree of balance, polish and subtlety of his most recent work.

As for the DVD itself it is short on extras with only a trio of trailers and some web links but it sports an excellent, high quality transfer of the film itself. There are some small amounts of film grain, the occasional speck of dust or hair on the print but this is far superior to any version I’ve seen in the past and is most likely the best this film is ever going to look on DVD. The one somewhat jarring aspect of the film transfer was the choice to black out areas of the screen where Thai subtitles originally appeared. This happens very rarely and I can only assume that the Thai prints available for the DVD transfer had these original subtitles burned directly into the film and the blacking out was required to allow the English subtitles to overlay without interference. The English subtitles have the occasional problem with grammar and spelling but are perfectly serviceable and easy to read.

- Posted by Todd at January 4, 2005 07:54

Last Life in the Universe (*****)

Ruang Rak Noi Nid Mahasan (เรื่องรัก น้อยนิด มหาศาล)
Thailand, 2003, 112 minutes, color
Directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Written by Prabda Yoon & Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Cinematography by Christopher Doyle
Cast: Tadanobu Asano (Kenji), Sinitta Boonyasak (Noi), Laila Boonyasak (Nid), Takashi Miike (Yakuza boss)

“One day the lizard woke up and realized that it was all alone on this earth.”

Feeling depressed, I rewatched this film last night and its beauty perked me up. After Blade Runner, this is probably my second favorite film of all time. What's it about? I'm not good with plot synopses, so here's an excellent one from FilmsAsia.com's Soh Yun-Huei:

"Kenji (Tadanobu Asano) is an obsessively neat Japanese man who is living on his own in Bangkok, and earning a living by being a librarian at the Japanese Cultural Centre. A look through his house would reveal exactly how meticulous Kenji is -- all his belongings are organized by size, shape, colour, day to be worn, and so on. Kenji has also been contemplating suicide for some time, and fantasizing about what his death would be like. His orderly life is thrown into disarray when his estranged Yakuza brother turns up at his doorstep, seemingly on the run from his big boss. However, that's far from the only incident that will shake up Kenji's life. An unfortunate series of events leads Kenji to become acquainted with a woman called Noi (Sinitta Boonyasak), who's basically his antithesis. She's disorganized, messy, and does not worry about the finer details, and when Kenji ends up at her beachside house, his obsessive-compulsive nature kicks in and he offers to tidy up the place. Gradually, a romance develops between Kenji and Noi, despite their differences and a language barrier."

So much for plot, though that doesn't begin to describe the depth and meaning of this film which is felt more than understood. For each time I watch it, I learn and notice more. I think it takes several viewings to "see" certain films, and this is certainly one of them. I never noticed the Ichi the Killer movie poster in the opening shot - an "inside joke" because it's a film by Takashi Miike starring Tadanobu Asano, both of whom appear in the film. I never noticed Yukio Mishima's novel Black Lizard on Asano's bookshelf. And I never noticed (until I studied the credits) that the film's sisters Nid and Noi are played by real-life sisters: Laila Boonyasak (Nid) and Sinitta Boonyasak (Noi).


Sister Act: Laila (center) and Sinitta Boonyasak (right)

But seeing and fully understanding are not the same thing, as Last Life in the Universe still leaves one with many questions. Namely, is Kenji a yakuza (we see one shot of his tattooed back)? Is that his gun or his brother's? Does he sleep with Noi (it's only suggested but we get no in flagrante delecto proof). Why can't he go back to Osaka? Does he get the girl in the end or is that only a fantasy? What does the fantasy sequence when a stoned Noi watches all the clutter in her house - flying papers and detritus - get cleaned up via reverse editing? Does he get away at the end or is it merely just another fantasy, like the visions he has of Noi's dead sister Nid?


Kenji keeps a spotless kitchen

Though I recently screened another Thai film (Tears of the Black Tiger) at my library film series, Last Life in the Universe remains my favorite Thai film and Pen-Ek Ratanaruang my favorite Thai director. Maybe it's because of the cinematography by Christopher Doyle, whose work here and with Hong's Kong's Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood for Love, 2046) give gravitas to my considering him the world's best director of photography.

Speaking of images, those of lizards and geckos abound in last Life in the Universe. A gecko is a permanent fixture on the wall at Noi's house.


This gecko is not as chatty as Geico's


Noi's gecko keeps cool by the ceiling fan

A copy of Yukio Mishima's novel Black Lizard is clearly shown on Kenji's bookshelf. And Kenji is obsessed with a children's book called The Last Lizard, obviously identifying with the cool, aloof, lonely reptile.


Kenji's book: THE LAST LIZARD

In a voiceover, Kenji narrates the book's text as he stands on a bridge contemplating jumping into the river below:

The lizard wakes up and finds he's the last lizard alive. His family and friends are all gone. Those he didn't like, those who picked on him in school, are also gone. The lizard is all alone. He misses his family and friends. Even his enemies. It's better being with your enemies than being alone. That's what he thought. Staring at the sunset, he thinks. "What is the point in living, if I don't have anyone to talk to?" But even that thought doesn't mean anything...when you're the last lizard."

The lizard's tale is reprised in the film's trailer:


The cool, aloof Tadanobu Asano gives what is for me his greatest performance as the quiet, anal-compulsive neatnik librarian Kenji who's constantly trying to "off" himself like Bud Cort in Harold & Maude.


Thai film poster made for hanging

He's almost other-wordly in his unassuming pureness, like Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. As a card-carrying librarian myself, I want to be him because he's the coolest librarian ever depicted in film. And not only is he polite and clean, but he's very can-do when it comes to killing bad people or defending women from being roughed-up - admirable qualities for today's multi-skilled Librarians 3.0. Kenji is obsessed with a children's book about the last Lizard on earth, the lizard being as quiet and aloof a reptile as Kenji appears on the surface.

And, of course, I was quite taken with the lovely Sinitta Boonyasak, the "someone to talk to" who gives Kenji's life purpose and saves him from being "the last lizard on Earth." (Or does she?)


Still as a gecko: Quiet moments define the film's tone

As a couple, Kenji and Noi are The Odd Couple, complete opposites. She is as messy, cluttered and unfocused as Kenji is compulsively neat (he has to arrange all the soap bars in the men's room at work in symmetrical stacks and line up all his kitchen knifes in a straight line) and orderly. She's a relaxed stoner, he's unfailingly uptight and sober. And when she talks, she can be chatty, talking quickly in the rapid-fire bursts of a bar girl, whereas Kenji is never more than a monosyllabic converser.

I loved the film's minimalist tone and dialogue - according to a DVD interview with director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, famous Thai writer Prabda Yoon (his first name is Thai for Pravda, the Russian word for "truth") - whose dad was a famous Thai journalist - helped strip the screenplay down to this surreal, dreamy still-life tone full of long silences. No one says a whole lot in the film, especially the tongue-tied Kenji. I ran across a website where dedicated fan Drew of Drew's Script-O-Rama actually transcribed the entire script (!): Last Life in the Universe Dialogue Script.

As FilmsAsia.com's Soh Yun-Huei observes, "Much of Last Life in the Universe deals with the romance that forms between Kenji and Nid, who are both loners not used to reaching out to others. Perhaps due to the characters' quirks, Pen-Ek has taken a very detached approach in his direction, almost similar to Takeshi Kitano's films." Huei also rightly points out the film's similarity to Lost In Translation, another film about love, loss and alienation in a land in which both protagonists are outsiders. But I think Pen-Ek's film is better and more rewarding upon repeated viewings. For one thing, the language barrier is even more pronounced here. "Kenji and Noi do not speak each other's languages, so they turn to a fractured English to communicate, and Pen-Ek manages to flesh out the difficulties that the situation brings about."

I'd also like to find the soundtrack, which uses ambient electric piano to augment the long silent patches with a dream-like calmness.

Last Life in the Universe's creative trio of writer Prabda Yoon, cinematographer Christopher Doyle and actor Tadanobu Asano also teamed up for Pen-ek's next film, Invisible Waves (2006), so if you like the first collaboration, check it out. Unfortunately, it hasn't been released in the States, so unless you have an All-Region DVD player or want to watch it on your PC...