The Long Walk (Bor Mi Vanh Chark)
The Long Walk (Bor Mi Vanh Chark)
Directed by Mattie Do
Starrings: Yannawoutthi Chanthalungsy, Vilouna Phetmany, Por Silatsa, Noutnapha Soydara, Chanthamone Inoudome, Brandon Hashimoto
Country: Laos
Year 2019
Author review: Roberto Matteucci
Click Here for Italian Version
"Am I dead?"
In southeast Asian countries, ghosts belong to everyday life. They are natural companions to live with. Their existence is obvious, no one doubts this easy axiom.
There is a huge literature about this subject. The main representative is the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In the film Tropical Malady two boys merge with the forest and the spirits who exist inside. In the film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives the protagonist Boonmee has cancer. In his house in the jungle, he waits to become a ghost to join the spirits of his family.
There is the novelist Pira Sudham. His stories are set in the Isan, region of Thailand between Laos and Cambodia. In that area, the inhabitants do not speak Thai but Lao and, less, Khmer: the languages of Laos and Cambodia.
His books narrate the forests as the habitual home of the spirits of ancestors and the deceased.
There is Khamman Khonkhai in The Teachers of Mad Dog Swamp (Silkworm Books, 1978) he writes about his experience as a teacher in a small village in the province. He learns the knowledge of the forest, dominated by animals, and he will defend it at all costs:
“They say the ghosts used to be pretty fierce. But nowdays I don’t think there are any. The ghosts and evil spirits have vanished – they are frightened of the noise of cars and trucks. They have all fled into the forest …” (Pag. 68)
There is more, a vast narrative about spectres, in Asian cinematography and literature.
Confirmed the existence of spirits, the next step is to understand if they are dangerous.
“... believe that ghosts must be the scariest beings in the world. … But, now I've developed a new impression, I think I've seen the world long enough to conclude that certain kinds of human beings are actually much scarier that ghosts.” (1)
The conclusion is an obvious truth: the fear arrives from human beings, not from ghosts.
Spectres, serial killers, science fiction, chips under the skin are the themes chosen by the Laotian director Mattie Do in the film Bor Mi Vanh Chark - The Long Walk - La Longue Marche presented at the 76th Venice Film Festival.
The plot is complex, a combination of genres and elements but with a basic script. Close-up of a Laotian boy, he is walking in the forest. He finds a motorbike, long-shot, he takes it. On the path, he sees a skull on the earth. It is the symbol of death in that lonely vegetation. The jungle is far from the cities. In the metropolises, there is war, the flashes of the bombs are distant.
On the same lane a man meets a ghost, she is a girl. With her, he will go back in time: "We can walk together if you want".
The boy and the man are the same person. He was a child when his sick mother died. A terrible and distressing disappearance.
Become an adult, he wishes to help sick people and their families to practice euthanasia to the terminally ill. Many genres do not hide the main topic: euthanasia.
There are other theses, such as the religious and cultural metaphor of ghosts, the grieving process, the pain, the destiny.
Mattie Do explains the reasons for her attention on euthanasia, a choice arising from personal happening:
“One of the things which had happened during the writing of this film was... my dog Mango died. We had to euthanize him, which was a very difficult decision for us. And that made it into the film. It brought memories back for me about my mother, who passed away when I was 25 years old from cancer. She refused treatment herself, and to me it showed death from two different perspectives. On the one hand my dog, who couldn't make a decision for himself, on the other hand my mother, who called the family together and said: "We're not going to do this, and suffer through it longer. I'm in stage four, my quality of life is horrible already, why extend it and hope against hope?" And she went home, and we were all with her, even relatives like uncles from farther away, were all with her when she passed away. So a lot of this made it into The Long Walk. But if you'd read the earlier drafts, they weren't at all similar, we were still just having fun!” (2)
It may seem irreverent to compare the passing of her mother with the death of the dog, but it is not for an author born in South East Asia.
The scenes are refined, especially the nocturnal ones, with an exaltation of light and their sources, such as the fire of the finale. The same happens with noises. In a silent forest, there are many sounds.
The social argument is in the description of life in the woodland. There is vast poverty ("as long as we can eat something tonight"). They have little things, little money, emphasized in the exasperating details as in the close-up of old and filthy flip-flops.
The example is when the man enters the house of his youth. All is dark.
Shoulder-level-shot, a girl is walking, a man appears. There is haze, the lighting is unnatural. The murmur from the forest, the sound of footsteps in the path, an extra-diegetic hiss makes everything unreal.
Cut. Long-shot. The two look at each other. The girl is not distinguishable in the fog.
Cut. Long-shot. Camera behind. He goes ahead. There is a house with lights in the windows. He moves into.
Cut. Close-up. He turns.
Cut. Long-shot, gets into the porch. Footsteps on the floor wood.
Cut. Close up. He is inside, everything is obscure. The detail on the illuminated glasses.
Cut. Mid-shot. He observes and touches a dusty table.
Cut. Matches on man's face. It is a familiar place. It is full of dirty dishes and dinner leftovers.
He observes the sideboard. The particular on the inside, with flat cups. There is a pottery small statue of a woman with her legs lying down and her torso raised with an one hand.
Cut. He grabs it. He scrutinizes it. He recognizes it. He looks at it carefully.
Long-shot. At that moment a voice-over shouts. The man, frightened, lets it fall, breaking it.
Cut. Close-up of the broken pottery on the floor.
The scene is important as the protagonist rediscovers his old home. It is filmed in a dark tone, the camera always on him, alternating close-up and long-shot, with a shoulder-level-shot. He uses the focus to delineate the girl as a spirit. First, she has a body, then it is just a line.
The sound is disturbed by annoying hissing. There is no dialogue until the owner screams. With his appearance changes the illumination of the environment, now everything is clear.
The film is a fusion of mysticism and philosophy.
The ethical principles, good and evil, are confused, are hardly identifiable. Killing an individual, even if sick, good or evil?
So, the director utilises the dreamlike aspect like a fog, a haze. The Lao forest hides nature and also the soul of people.
There is the poetic view, an unrealistic one. Science is fiction, it has no value, despite the author trying to present a sci-fi background, such as payments with chips in the wrist.
There is no logic, there is an atmosphere. Also, as funny as the figures of the two lesbians or the cruel sequence of solar panels. The usual inefficient and rich NGO installs solar panels in the garden of the house "we will have enough light to watch us starve". They do not support them to produce and recover poverty gap, the NGO is selling special effects.
As a structure of language, in addition to genres, Mattie Do uses numerous finesses. The camera sometimes moves quickly and others slowly, with many comings and goings of corpses, with the Buddhist funeral, with the focus effect.
The ending, thanks to the fire, is purifying. In the colour of those flames, there is the meaning of life. In this world – both in the past and in the future – only ghosts will survive. It is better, ghosts are not as dangerous as humans.
Ghosts are ruling Thailand by Patcharawalai Sanyanusin, Bangkok Post, 9 november, 2011
https://screenanarchy.com/2020/02/rotterdam-2020-interview-mattie-do-talks-about-the-long-walk.html
