Ghosts in the Darkness

Outside the hotel window in New Delhi, green jungle stretched out as far as the eye could see, far out into the distance so it became a dim white haze. The hotel window was locked shut, so you could not tell how enticing the strange smells of this beautiful polluted haze might be or of the heavy oppressive heat outside.

A city filled with traces of history that had swallowed up people throughout its thousands of years. It was not difficult to see the ghosts of several centuries past, busily walking to and fro, beautiful and handsome with their dark skins and white teeth and light flowing robes, and to look right through them to the traffic beyond. 

I tried thinking back to the Thailand of thirty years ago. I realized that my memories of the time I was a child in Khon Kaen were vague, like something that had happened a thousand years ago. Had Khon Kaen changed so much since then that it was so difficult to picture now? Even more difficult than trying to visualize India, having arrived in the country only a few days ago with nothing more than information from travel books.

I think this is one of the reasons I make films: my personal memories are always interwoven with those from various other sources, reading, listening and travelling (my own travels and those of others). It was hard then to remember the real past clearly, so I made films without knowing how true they really were. This was an important detail; it was like waking the dead and giving them a new soul, making them walk once more. 

It is the same when writing, sometimes it is just our imagination, arising from our desire to remember, as Gabriel García Márquez wrote: “The memory is clear but there is no possibility that it is true.”

My father said that years ago Khon Kaen was jungle; the Khon Kaen that I remember was jungle too and I wanted it to be that way, a green and shady place. In the middle of this jungle was a wooden house on the hospital grounds; my parents were doctors there.

My parents liked to take their children to the cinema. 

My earliest memories are of a helicopter hovering in the air and money falling from the sky into the sea, hundreds and thousands of banknotes flying around in the air, with loud and furious shooting. It is the only thing I can remember from this Thai film. I don’t even know whether or not the starring actor was good-looking or not. 

All this overlaps with a picture of my mother and myself, small and dressed in school uniform, standing in front of our house early in the morning. I had just finished bathing and was waiting happily for the monks to pass by on their alms round, so as to make merit. I would like to remember the time when I was still in my mother’s womb, but I don’t have the concentration for that. So the helicopter and the alms round are really my first two interwoven memories, one of happiness and the other of films, both of which I am still captivated by today. 

Around seventy or more years ago, when people in the west would go to a film premiere, you needed a beautifully designed invitation in order to attend and you would wear a suit or an elegant evening gown to show off your wealth. In the jungles of Khon Kaen it was the same, going to see a film was an event that had to be properly prepared for. You had to travel to the cinema to buy the tickets, wait in the queue, look at the posters and buy your refreshments, almost like a sacred ritual. No matter how bad the film was, it would always seem better for this. On looking back, I don’t think I ever saw a bad film before I was eighteen. Luckily there were no videotapes at that time, so there were cinemas scattered around town, like temples, making it seem a more cultured place. 

Once I travelled to see the first Thai cartoon called The Adventure of Sudsakorn [1979], probably at the Rama cinema near my parents’ clinic. Sitting in the darkness, I was amazed at the Thai designs on the costumes, the ornamentation on the dragon horse and the artistically imagined ocean waves. I thought to myself how clever Payut Ngaokrachang was, and how we didn’t have to watch Japanese cartoons any longer – we could make our own now and they were so much better. I wanted to draw cartoons too, and eagerly awaited part two of Sudsakorn. 

The various names given to the cinemas in that jungle town were interesting too. For example “Rama,” which maybe came from the Greek suffix orama, meaning: to see, or that which is seen. It was also used in words that appeared in America, for instance Cinerama and Odorama. It could be, though, that the word came from India, where the name Praram (Rama) originates; this might explain why the name of the cinema close to the Rama was called Raja. 

Actually, the first film shown in Asia – with films by the Lumières – was in Bombay, in 1896. From there, films spread out to the other port cities like Shanghai and Kobe. By the time they reached Khon Kaen six or seven decades later, the names of the cinemas had mutated into local versions, such as Khon Kaen Cinema, Banterngchit Cinema, Kaen Kham Cinema, until a decade later when American films took over the world and cinemas appeared with names like Prince.

The Khon Kaen and the Raja would show films from the west and they both had a small glass room for the last row of seats, called the soundtrack room. It was a room where you could listen to the “real” voices of the actors. It seemed to be only for a select few since you had to pay more. Our parents always took us to sit in the glass room. I suppose they wanted us to learn English. But you could always hear the Thai dubbed soundtrack filtering in from outside. It made watching those films special, to be able to listen to them in two languages at the same time.

There were times however, when we chose to sit outside the glass room in order to understand the film better. This was where I came to know “Konjanard.” When the trucks advertising the upcoming films would drive up and down the local roads, with their beautifully painted posters, a resounding voice would always finish off the announcements, “Thai dubbing by Konjanard.”

He had a special talent: he could “play” every character in the film, men and women. It seemed a bit strange sometimes, when the voice of a female character on the screen was a little too deep, or when the mouths didn’t move while the characters were conveying their emotions. This, though, was one of the attractions of watching a film; audiences became as captivated with the voices of Rong Kaomoonkadee or Juree Osiri (who dubbed films into their old age) as they did with the Thai films themselves. It’s not surprising then that Thailand didn’t change to sound on film until the 1980s, decades after many other countries, with us thinking all the while that live dubbing was customary around the world.

I have only recently found out that this tradition of dubbing films live originated in Japan and was called “Benshi.” Its influence spread from there to only a limited number of countries, namely Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand. Today in Japan there are still around one hundred Benshi performances a year. 

I was lucky to see and learn more of this while I was in India. There I saw a Benshi performance presented with a silent 16mm film by Kenji Mizoguchi. The Benshi would sit up front, at the side of the stage, looking very important, his speeches deeply moving. At end of the film, the heroine was condemned to death for the unintentional killing of the villain, who had tried to rape her. The hero, a lawyer, was so sorry that he put a gun to his head and killed himself too. As I watched, I thought of Konjanard and how talented he was, just as talented as these artists here, even though I still don’t know what he looked like. 

When the Kaen Kham cinema opened, it was as if it had been sent down from heaven. It was very close to our house at the hospital, and if you were determined enough, you could walk there. The cinema opening was a grand affair; it was the biggest cinema in Khon Kaen and in the eyes of a child it was comparable to the Colosseum in Rome. As you walked into the darkness you were embraced by its magnificence, and surrendered yourself to the pictures you saw.

The Kaen Kham opened when Thai films were popular, most of them period films, praising patriotism. Local traditions were being revived, for example in the films Plae kao [The Scar, 1977] and Leud Suphan [1979; both directed by Cherd Songsri]; Khon Phukao [Mountain People, 1979] and Look Isan [Son of the Northeast, 1982; both directed by Vichit Kounavudhi]; Gno ba [The Sagai, 1980, directed by Prince Bhanubhan Yukol] and Phantay Norasingh [Oarsman Norasingh, 1982, directed by Neramitr]. I remember the letters on the posters of these films – they were huge, as large as the films themselves. Some were Thai style design, some were curving panoramas, like soaring cliff-faces. 

These cinemas, where I was introduced to two great teachers, Vichit Kounavudhi and Cherd Songsri, were beyond compare. The two directors used scenes from the Thai landscape beautifully. Even when they filmed buffalo, they were beautiful. When they filmed the villagers, some fully clothed, some not, you could smell the earth. It was as if I was seeing the beauty of this jungle where I lived for the first time. 

There was one film I saw at Kaen Kham, a film by Somphot Saengduenchai called Paendinwipayoak [1978]. The letters of the film title were rows of chipped and crooked stone. Filmed in 70mm, it was a love story set in the midst of a disaster. The leading character was the Pra That Phanom Pagoda. At the end of the film, it was struck by lightning during a storm, and it crashed to the ground. It was just as well that the story was taken from a real event. If they had used any other temple or ancient site instead (think, for example, of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha) the filmmakers would have been in deep trouble – perhaps to the point of losing their heads!

These films were probably influenced by western disaster films of the time, such as Earthquake and The Poseidon Adventure, or the Japanese films like Ultraman, made in the traditional style of Godzilla, with miniature models of towns and houses being destroyed and people milling around, and dying, like ants. 

Nevertheless, Paendinwipayoak was a special film that made a lasting impression on me, because Phra That Phanom played its part wonderfully. You could say that it was the best-directed piece of architecture ever in Thai cinema, much stronger than the two leads, Sorapong Chatree and Piyamart Mornyakul, who were also skilled actors. In the film, the heroine sits on the river bank wearing a Thai costume; the hero leads a buffalo there to catch a glimpse of her. The scenes of their courtship, prolonged and elaborate, were set amidst nature. In a room, the lovers would look into each other’s eyes for several minutes before speaking, a long silence very fitting for a forbidden love. 

Another thing worth mentioning is the fact that the film was made in a village up-country. I’m not sure if it was the actual site of the story, in Nakhon Phanom. There were many villagers walking around in clouds of dust. They filmed the local custom of parading the cat for rain, playing local music and dancing in particularly long scenes.

I have to think of silent movies, made by westerners about exotic tribes in faraway lands, such as China or Africa. They would take back these films to be shown at home, like selling creatures from strange uncivilized lands. The films Paendinwipayoak and Khon Phukao were just the same. They were filmed up-country, just taking the outer shell of local traditions and then selling them, like the Tourist Authority of Thailand does today. It was special then, though, for people now began to experience pre-packaged culture.

The Paendinwipayoak I saw as a child gave me as much pleasure then as computer games do for children today. The excitement would build up on several levels, starting with raging storm winds, then caves tumbled in, the jungle waters flooded, mountains split apart (really), the earth subsided and lightning struck, up until the climax when Phra That Phanom was destroyed. Even though the film was based on a true story, the facts of the disaster were added to and exaggerated a hundred-fold so as to show off the special effects, which made watching the film so satisfying. Several scenes emphasized the fact that there was no such thing as democracy in films; because of this couple’s love, the always innocent villagers would be dying in droves. Some of the extras were exceptional actors too, but they would only play slaves, running around screaming and dying, falling down like rows of felled sugar palm trees.

In those days, the country was still rather wild and there was not much for sale in the local marketplace. Several times after returning home from watching a film, I would make models of what I had seen. After watching this film, I rushed home to make a model of the Phra That Phanom. I cut up paper to make carefully drafted models; then I used stickers to put them together from the base to the spire and colour pencils to draw the designs. I could still draw them from memory today, having made several models in order to destroy them; I also made plasticine models. Sometimes I thought it would be such a pity to destroy them, so I just drew in all the cracks and pretended that they had already been struck by lightning. 

Several years later, when I was a student of architecture, I had the opportunity to visit the actual pagoda in Nakhon Phanom. I was not particularly impressed with the renovated building, which looked too perfect, just like any ordinary concrete structure. It had no sensitivity. It was strange that the real thing did not seem as sacred as the illusion on screen. Perhaps someone should try and remake this film. I would like to see if they could revive the Phra That Phanom and make it look as good as the old version did. 

I remember making a model of a big crocodile after watching the film Kortaikiem. However, there were some models I couldn’t make, such as the bear from Grizzly or Piranha. The end of my model-making days came with the arrival of the Spielberg film E.T. when models of E.T. began to be sold in the local market, complete with illuminated finger tips.

Kaen Kham would usually show Thai films. I attended regularly until the arrival of films by the director Jazz Siam called Kon Sorng Jao [1989] and Hong 2 Run 44. Chintara appeared on screen, looking strange in a school uniform, eventually changing her clothes to become a reporter who uncovers the wicked plans of an evil man. She starred in another film called Yuea [Victim, 1988], in which she was raped and murdered by a gang of teenagers – in the middle of the film, like Janet Lee in Psycho. I believe Yuea was based on a true story.

Thai films at that time could be compared to an animal adjusting its eyes to a new world – they were evolving. The stories started to reveal the evils in society; the leading ladies were working women now, but also “bait.” 

As VHS video arrived in the jungles of Khon Kaen, we saw that there were many other gods dwelling in other cities, such as Fellini, Antonioni, and Godard. And as we became more sophisticated, the entertainment of watching Thai films gradually fell away. Our local gods weren’t able to make films with buffalo anymore. Like the motorized plough, there were many developments in the industry. Cinema was no longer an elegant affair, no suits or evening gowns, no more waiting in the queues to buy a ticket either.

Luckily, Cherd Songsri had his successors, and there were others who had accompanied him, such as Khun Toranong Srichua. He was not an aristocrat; he was a regular person like the villager played by Sorapong Chatree in the film Plae Kao. Toranong made the raw film Kampuchea [1985], dragging Darin Kornsakul deep into the jungle, searching for a new world born out of desire, a seventh heaven. He brought mamasans and prostitutes onto the screen, a slap in the face of progress. It turned old scars into fresh wounds, fresher than the entrails being eaten by the ghosts in every episode of Haunted House. I ask myself: Who could make these films today? It’s a pity that there are no longer such searching souls, neither in the stories nor in the making of the films. You could say there is no toranong [pride] like Toranong’s in Thai cinema.

One of Toranong’s masterpieces, which hit you so hard you were unable to forget it, was Ubatihoat, or Bangkok Emergency [1988]; it was more dangerous than Bangkok Dangerous. In this film Likit Eakmongkol played a criminal who had kidnapped Sek and held him hostage. Maybe it was a bit like the Hong Kong films that used incredible amounts of munition, but the heated excitement of the film was original Thai; no filtering, blood was blood.

They didn’t try to pair off Sinjai, who plays a reporter, with Apichart, who plays a young policeman; nor did she fall in love with Sek or Likit, whose wife was not particularly beautiful either. The extras acted really well, too, as did the doctors and nurses. They were not like the “professional” extras in today’s films. 

Toranong really confronted the audience with his story. In the film young Sek begins to sympathize with Likit, and eventually helps him. He finds out that the real villain is a politician; finally, he becomes the gunman himself, killing the godfather. 

Before proceeding, I would like to talk about the Prince, the newest cinema built around that time. It was the final breath of happiness. The Prince cinema was splendidly majestic. There was still the usual glass room, catering to Khon Kaen University students who wanted to practice their English. Depending on the situation, they were willing to show any kind of film, both Thai and foreign. The students also had to adapt, just like Thai cinema, to a society that was gradually developing with its education. It could be compared to cutting down old trees. The experience of going abroad to study felt quite different in Prickkeenoo Gap Moo Ham [1989, directed by Somjing Srisupap] than in earlier films. Before, you had a love story surrounded by the usual tourist views of foreign places, two-dimensional “scenery” so to speak, whereas Prickkeenoo Kap Moo Ham was about entering and adapting to that foreign culture (both for the actress Janjira Jujaeng and the audience), struggling with it in order to survive mentally. 

Tai Entertainment Co. turned the industry completely upside down and changed it into what it is today. Whether it was for the better or worse, depends on your viewpoint, but the film from this company which impressed me the most was Ya Bork Wa Tuer Barb [1987, directed by Thanit Jitnukul]. A courthouse drama starring Sinjai Hongtai, the film played out in just a few locations, at home, at work, and in court. There were no views of San Francisco or the Golden Gate (just a boat landing on the Chao Phraya River). Sinjai’s hair was cut short (not untidy like Janjira’s), looking neat like a quiet storm. If she had competed for the Oscar, she would have won the Best Actress award by unanimous decision; she would have beaten Jodie Foster in The Accused

As I mentioned before, all the films I saw before I turned 18 were good – although I’m not sure how old I was when I saw this one. Before the cinemas and audiences were rounded up and driven into department stores to become a new generation of ghosts, Jintara Sukkapat, Darin Kornsakul, and Sinjai Hongtai were the best Thai actresses. 

The reason I call the audience ghosts is because it reminds me of a short story I read a few years ago. It was said to be a true story that took place in Udon Thani province. Coincidentally, I just found out that it is about to be made into a film by Five Star Productions. As far as I can remember, the story went something like this: The main character was a man with a travelling cinema show, he made open-air presentations in villages and temples. One day a very mysterious man hired him to show a film in a temple that was a long way off. By the time he had arrived and set up the projector and film screen, it was after dusk. Gradually people started to arrive in the darkness. While the film was running, the audience all sat still in an orderly fashion, their eyes looking up at the screen. They did not show any emotion, nor did they speak to one another until the film ended. Then they all got up and wandered away. At dawn the next day the film-show owner realized that he was in the middle of a cemetery, and that he had been paid to show a film for ghosts. 

When I finished reading this story, I felt sad: even ghosts wanted to watch films, just like everyone else. They were ghosts that still wanted to dream; they paid their final offering of money to buy dreams, which was film. If you notice the people around you while watching a film, you will see that their behaviour is like that of ghosts, lifting up their heads to look at the moving images in front. The cinema itself is like a coffin with bodies, sitting still, as if under a spell. The moving images on the screen are camera records of events that have already taken place; they are remains of the past, strung together and called a film. In this hall of darkness, ghosts are watching ghosts. 

I felt the same way last month, when I had the opportunity to visit an arthouse cinema in Taipei called Spot Cinema. It is run by a well-known film director, a god, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and is supported by the government which had donated the premises. The decoration inside was marvellous. There was a bookstore, a shop selling DVDs, a restaurant and a coffee shop called Café Lumière. In several corners there were stills from Hou’s films, proudly used as decoration. On the stairway ceiling was a large black and white photo of a man riding a motorcycle with a girl sitting behind him, a scene from one of his classic films. The person showing us around was a man well past middle-age; he pointed to the picture of the young man on the motorcycle and said that they had been in the same class at school. It affected me deeply as I heard this; it wouldn’t be long now before everyone here would become ghosts. The old man showing us around was wearing glasses and already showing grey hair, but his friend on the motorcycle would always remain the same age. 

Just as we like to look at ghosts, we seem instinctively to want to enter dark halls; we are excited by the prospect of hearing stories that emanate from that light in the darkness. It is like returning to our mother’s womb, fleeing there for safety, like the time during the war in Laos, when people living on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the trail created by the communists to send sup- plies to the Vietcong in southern Vietnam, were attacked by phosphorous bombs during an air raid and took refuge in a cave; hundreds of them were killed there by poisonous gases. The cave is probably still full of bones, ranging from small children to adults. If you went to see it now, you might see real ghosts there – you wouldn’t need a film.

Another effect the war had on caves was on Cat Ba Island in Vietnam. The story goes that during the war convoys of injured soldiers were brought there. From the ships that landed at Halong Bay, the wounded were carried into the tropical jungle and up the hills, to a mountain which was hidden from the outside world. They entered a cave called Quan Y. Inside was a maze of rooms just like a mummy’s tomb in Egypt. 

Incredibly, this cave was a hospital, complete with an X-ray room, operating theatre, conference room and table tennis room. As you walked further in, it opened up into a huge cavern which was used as a cinema. Try to imagine a hospital inside a mountain, and then, amazingly, a cinema inside that hospital. At one end of the cavern there was a small pool used for bathing and rehabilitation while watching films.

When you think of the soldiers lying there, watching moving images on the stone walls in front of them, you come to the conclusion that we watch films instinctively, as therapy for mental or emotional pain. Tens of thousands of years ago, when our ancestors were living in caves, they often drew on the walls of the cave, showing us how they lived their lives. It seems to be an unknown force in our blood. Looking at it like this, you could say that cinemas, whether inside or outside department stores, are our modern-day caves. 

Recently, returning to Khon Kaen, I drove past a concrete complex built a long time ago. Some of the shops were closed up with no one living there, but looking straight ahead you could see the cinema that was once the Kaen Kham. It was still as huge as I remembered it, except that now it was abandoned, with cracks and large pieces of concrete missing. Underneath, it was being used as a parking lot for a few scattered cars, a food store was hidden in one corner. A kind-hearted shopkeeper told me that if I liked I could go inside the old cinema. You had to squeeze through a torn, iron sliding door. After passing through this dark niche, adjusting your eyes to the dark, you could see the coffin-like hall, deathly quiet, looking as if it had been through a war, which of course it had. It had gone through many wars and was now like a dead animal. There was a hole in the roof where a ray of sunlight shone through, like a beam of light thrown into a cave; it felt even more so as you walked, because you could hear your own footsteps echoing. 

At the top were a few rows of dusty red leather seats, the rows in the middle and below, near the screen, had all been removed. Like a wounded animal, the place had tried to heal itself by changing into a snooker hall, but by then it had lost too much blood, so it changed into a boxing stadium, which was the final mask it wore before dying.

As I walked down the dusty stairs, I saw a middle-aged woman lying on a mat, up against a pillar, listening to a radio. Nearby two girls were playing – it was a late Sunday morning, so there was no school. As I walked back to the car the girls ran over and asked why I was there. I told them I had come to see the cinema I used to go to as a child. I asked them in return what they would like to be when they grew up. They looked at each other and thought for a moment, then answered, “anything really, as long as it makes money.” It was a simple answer, and to the point. Who doesn’t want to make money? Monks need basic subsistence in order to take care of the temples. Filmmakers want to make money so as to buy more film. Maybe the two girls were just stating the obvious truth, that whatever you do, it should make money. 

If you had asked them this question when they were a little older, maybe you would have received a longer answer, such as, “anything that makes money but leaves you beautiful” (which rules out cooking, because hot fat ruins the complexion) or, “anything that makes money but is not too strenuous” (which rules out working in a factory or any other physically tiring work) or, “whatever makes money, leaves you beautiful, is not strenuous, and makes you happy.” Now that would be possible only if you were born, took three breaths, and died. Someone would then make up your face and burn offerings to send you to heaven, which would be against the rules because you died before growing up. The first and last conditions – making money and staying happy – could get complicated. Awkward questions would be asked, such as, do you want a lot of money, would a one-baht salary be enough? And if you just happened to be born with everything provided for, never having to worry about much, would you truly be happy? 

Wouldn’t it have been easier just to have said at the beginning: “anything as long as I’m happy.” If you think like Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, you look for happiness in your own heart. Best to simply say that work is life, but to do so gets harder every day. By writing this, I am not suggesting that I’ve reached this point of acceptance; just the opposite in fact, because problems arise all the time – and because I am a filmmaker.