Scattered Memories
With his new film Thanatos, Drunk, Taiwanese director Chang Tao-chi sheds light on the life of those trying to survive in a tight corner.
From the selection of scenes to the tone and editing style, Thanatos, Drunk brings viewers into the scattered memories of the characters, tasking them with rebuilding the story while experiencing the rather depressing atmosphere of the scenes alongside the characters.
The film received widely positive reviews after its screening in 2015 and has been nominated and awarded at several international film festivals and awards, including the Berlin International Film Festival, Taipei Film Festival and Golden Horse Awards. One of the film’s leading actors, Lee Hong-chi, won the Best Actor award and Best New Performer award with this his first ever movie role.
At the 2016 AFA’s, Thanatos, Drunk was nominated for Best Film, Chang Tao-chi for Best Director, Lee Hong-chi for Best Newcomer, and his co-star Cheng Jen-Shuo for Best Actor.
Some reviews labeled the film somber or even dark, and Cheng Jen-Shu explains that the director wanted viewers to realize that there are people near them who are in the same situation as the characters.
Cheng also says that he did not feel that darkness at all during the filming process, as he was already immersed in his character in the film.
“Others may sense the somberness in this film, but we did not at that moment, because we were all living in the film.”
This notion of “living in the film” was a key instruction from the director. Cheng Jen-Shuo believes that if the viewers felt that they were just acting, then the whole film would just become a performance.
In “living” rather than “playing” the character, the director required the actors to truly expose themselves to the environments and people related to their characters as much as possible.
In order to become his character as a male escort, Cheng went to a real escort club, talked to the workers there and even interned for a while.
“The director believes that if truly you become the character, you will act and speak like him,” Cheng says.
As for Lee Hong-chi, who played the role of a good-for-nothing little brother, he also says that in order to “live the character”, he had to pick up a daily drinking habit, interact with vendors in the market, as well as insects.
During the shooting, the lead actor and actress were given a single word to help them better portray their characters. Lee received the word “death”. However, he did not interpret this as passing away but rather as a new beginning.
“This is how I see the other characters. Take Cheng Jen-Shuo’s character for example; everything that is related to him, his love relationship, his past, all are in demise. This also happens to my character’s mother and my brother… But their ‘demise’ is not real death.”
Lee says that becoming an award-winning actor has not changed anything about his life.
“Of course I was really high on the night of the award presentation. However, I was the same person the morning after, still wearing shorts and flip-flops. Nothing changed.”
The taste of ordinary life
Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda was nominated for Best Director at this year’s Asian Film Awards for his film Our Little Sister. Adapted from the manga of the same name, Koreeda was both the director and scriptwriter.
The film, like several of his previous ones, is related to the idea of family, portraying the life of three sisters after they reconnect with their fourth and youngest sister from a different mother.
What sets this film apart from Koreeda’s other works however, is its lack of twists. The film is pretty much a 128-minute recording of the lives of these four sisters. But despite the calm storyline though, viewers are somehow lured to stay on their seats, captured by the interaction between the characters and their relationships.
This may have something to do with the magic Koreeda acquired from his earlier documentary film making career. At that time he alwasy kept a distance between the camera and the actors, preventing from creation a pressing feeling, while at the same time avoiding meaningless wide shot.
During his AFA press conference, Koreeda revealed that the first draft of the script was all dialogue from the original manga. It was only after the actresses were cast that he started rewriting it and adding scenes not originally in the manga.
What makes the movie even more interesting is the fact that the four main actresses all improvised some of their lines and dialogue as well, making the interaction between their characters more vivid and organic.
So harmonious and spontaneous were these improvised scenes that the director says even the producer could not differentiate the impromptu scenes from the original plot.
When asked to comment on the performance of lead actresses Haruka Ayase and Masami Nagasawa, who played the eldest and second eldest sisters in the flim, Koreeda says that the two characters had some very different personalities, bringing to the film a stark contradiction between calmness and wildness and that the two actresses successfully captured these distinctions.
The director also praised another of the main actresses, Suzu Hirose, who played the youngest sister, for her acting skills. The role has already won Hirose several New Actress awards in Japan. Koreeda revealed that he made the decision to cast Hirose the second he saw her.
“From the very first moment I saw her I decided to hire her, and my crew had the same feeling as well”.
Koreeda did not take the title of Best Director at this year’s AFA, with the award instead going to Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien for his film The Assassin.
Koreeda congratulated Hou saying that his films have helped him to better understand Taiwan and China.