When a writer/director makes a film set in a country foreign to them, it is clear to local audiences that this is an outsider’s view of their nation and their culture. There’s a reason Lost in Translation is derided in Japan and Match Point is met with sheer indifference in the UK.
It becomes alienating to see your country through the eyes of somebody who hasn’t spent the majority of their life there, especially when the film is a work of social realism made by somebody with merely a second-hand knowledge of the realities of life there.
Yet the Thai film industry still submitted How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), the debut feature by Korean-American director Josh Kim, to be their entry for this year’s Best Foreign Language film award. An adaptation of two short stories by Thai-American writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap from his 2005 anthology “Sightseeing”, it takes pieces of literature very specific in their perceptions of Thai culture and turns them into something very distinctively made by an international citizen.
The film relies on stereotypes in order to portray a gritty Thailand overly familiar to global viewers, which proves detrimental to its quiet familial dramas, even if the movie does eventually prove to be worth emotionally investing in.
An irresistible premise, with a flat execution
Every year, all male Thai citizens turning 21 have to take part in a lottery determining whether or not they will be enlisted in the armed forces. Ek (Thira Chutikul) and his long-term boyfriend have just turned 21, but with different class backgrounds and a family to support, the ramifications of Ek being enlisted are severe.
The story is narrated by Ek’s younger brother Oat (in adult form, on the morning of his draft), which feels like a bad misstep, even as it should infuse the story with melancholy; he introduces his brother and his boyfriend during a sex scene, then at another point narrates a scene where his brother is masturbating. It makes Steven Tyler singing a love song over the top of his daughter’s sex scene in Armageddon look less incestuous by comparison.
The film is a thematic companion piece to Kim’s own documentary short Draft Day, which can be watched for free on YouTube here, which documented two transgender women still required to attend the draft due to being born male. In just ten minutes, the documentary tells an involving story that quietly details the emotional unrest in having your fate decided by picking a piece of paper from a hat, whilst also subtly acknowledging the fears of transgender women over still having to conform to male problems stereotypical in their society.
Here, both these issues are rendered flat. The first transgender character introduced is shown arriving in a swimsuit, camera slowly panning down distastefully to show the un-feminine bulge in-between her thighs. Even as the filmmaker tries to humanise the characters beyond being merely surface-level LGBT bit-parts to show how inclusive the society presented is, introducing them in this way undoes any good work. From the outset, Kim in equal parts sexualises and degrades her; she is nothing more than the sum of her sexual organs from the moment she appears on-screen, which is only the case because of this introduction.
It only represents social-realism to a viewer whose only pre-existing knowledge of Thai culture is The Hangover Part II. Then there are a plethora of Thai gangsters on the margins of the story, never becoming relevant yet frequently present – their bullying antics feel tiresome from the start, their ringleader’s banal cruelty towards children making him seem like Biff from Back to the Future, rather than a representation of the immorality of the criminal underworld, ready to corrupt and humiliate anybody in his way.
Then there is the draft itself, portrayed in an un-cinematic manner that is laughably reminiscent of The Hunger Games; instead of deriving tension and empathy from the characters’ impending fates being sealed in a way they cannot intervene, we spend a 10 minute stretch of the 79 minute running time watching a man telling characters we never meet whether or not they are being enlisted.
It’s telling that Kim’s documentary short felt more cinematic than his narrative debut. In another profoundly misjudged sequence, we get the most glaring use of product placement in cinematic history, as Ek takes Oat for a birthday meal at a chain fast food restaurant, whose TV advert was shown earlier in the film and whose logo is branded all over the frame upon their visit. Even in the age of big-budget, cinematic advertisements, this sequence feels glaringly televisual, with its sole ambition being to make you desire a burger and fries, with no attempt to even give the scene purpose in the context of the film as a whole.
Has as much heart as it does narrative problems
The film does prove to be emotionally engaging, somewhat in spite of itself. Whenever it focuses on the central narrative, a young couple from different class backgrounds and their families being torn apart by national service, the film understandably evokes empathy – this is a social reality mercifully alien to western viewers.
As Ek’s behaviour becomes increasingly irrational towards the end of the film, it is shown not as a downward spiral, but as a logical manifestation of hopelessness now that his life is out of his hands.
Although much is made of him and his long-term boyfriend being from different class backgrounds, it is never explored deeply enough; Ek’s status as a working-class guy supporting a family justifies many of his antics, but the fact it doesn’t bring his relationship into a state of disrepair before the narrative demands it to is conspicuous.
Being from a society where the class system is ingrained into its populace, I felt that the richest material in the story was still to be mined from it – I would argue that the film would be more relatable if it paid more attention to the details in the margins of the character’s social lives, instead of introducing irrelevant characters who represent different aspects of Thai life.
With the exception of the portrayal of a transgender character as being a walking set of genitals, it is refreshing to see a film produced in a more sexually repressive society that treats the character’s orientation as irrelevant to the character’s personality.
In the midst of awards-bait season, when LGBT roles are frequently taken by cis-gender heterosexuals in a cynical manner to gain gold statues, the unassuming nature of their sexual identity was winning. It may only be a surface-level portrayal of gay culture in Thailand, but at least it offered characters with depth and characteristics extending far beyond their sexual preferences.
Conclusion
How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) is annoyingly uneven, a character study that has fleshed out the least interesting elements and left the engaging ones firmly in the margins. With its irresistible, engaging premise based on a depressing reality, it isn’t hard to imagine there are many similar stories in Thai pop-culture. Hopefully, many of these stories won’t feel as narratively disjointed.
Which movies that have played festivals this year have gone ashamedly without cinematic release?
How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) is being released in the US on VOD and DVD from February 2nd.
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