Memory and Temporality in The Edge of Daybreak (2021), Anatomy of Time (2021) and Memoria (2021)

Over the past two years, three directors from Thailand each released a film that explores the issues of memory and temporality. There was Taiki Sakpisit’s impressive debut The Edge of Daybreak (2021), Jakrawal Nilthamrong’s anti-epic Anatomy of Time (2021), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s meditative tragedy Memoria (2021).

The critical success of these films and the interest they inspired in the Thai indie scenes indicate a sort of memory renaissance in Thai society. As the nation faces an ever-widening generational and political schism, there is an urge to look to the past for consolation, and alternatively, for an explanation.

At one point in the past, “history” as we understand it, was invented by society. In that process, said Benedict Anderson, human civilization underwent a temporal revolution.

In the past, time was not conceptualized as linear. It was either immediate or cyclical. Religious murals from all sorts of cultures portray human society side by side with the gods. The stories told in the bibles and the Jataka tales were always happening. They were, in effect, the timeless moral fiber of the universe.

But with the birth of the nation-state, our understanding of temporality changed. Time was empty and had to be filled with significant events, often associated with a particular ‘people’, ‘race’, or more eminently, ‘nation’.

Unlike the circular portraits in temples and churches, the legacy and fate of a nation are sketched on a timeline, which extends Janus-faced into the past and the future.

For David Harvey, the transportation and communication revolution in the late 20th century compressed time and space. Information flew fast and the timelines of nations became contested, edited, and distorted – ultimately losing their objective pretense.

The 21st century is a period of atemporality, as we realized that even history has human authors.

This postmodern condition slowly extended to Southeast Asia and Thailand, especially in the wake of the cold war, when both communism and capitalism as ideologies of modernity fell by the wayside.

At the same time, Thailand saw the resurgence of Hyperroyalism, where the monarchy became the symbol of a harmonic nation. That symbol also concealed multiple instances of political violence Thailand had experienced.

It wasn’t until this decade that a massive protest broke out calling for monarchical reform. This political reckoning basically forced everyone to scrutinize the state-sponsored past. At the core of this interrogation was the horrific violence previously excluded in the media and education.

One example was the controversial Thammasat Massacre. On October 6th, 1976, right-wing paramilitary groups and police officers slaughtered more than 40 students protesting the return of a former dictator.

The right-wing groups and police officers that conducted the massacre were supported and perhaps even patronized by the Thai monarchy. This was the uncomfortable fact that began to resurface as young Thais increasingly challenged the untouchable position of their kings.

The resurgence in memory of the Thammasat Massacre became a kind of entry point into the current memory renaissance, as will be seen in all three films.

The Edge of Daybreak opened in a monochromatic landscape, evoking the notion of “the past”. Black-and-white is arguably one of the most overused tropes in indie films. But here, director Taiki Sakpisit uses it very purposefully. He is critiquing our perception of time, especially the idea that it flows unilaterally.

That the film is shot in black-and-white makes us feel like we’re watching something that is happening in the past. But as the film progresses, we get the sense that time has been extended and flattened. The past merges into the present, as night turns into day and seamlessly into the night again.

The edge of daybreak represents a liminal space between history and the now. Bridging the two are traumatic memories of individuals. Imprisoned in the present by the impacts of past traumas.

(Image credit: Bakchormeeboy)

For most people watching the film, the centrality of the Thammasat Massacre in the film may not have been apparent until quite late in the run time. Even then, it was spoken mostly in paratextual codes. But most Thais would have known this. These codes are the lingos we use to talk about an event too controversial to openly discuss.

Like the characters in this movie, Thailand is stuck in this liminal space between past and present – the limbo of traumatic remembering. What do you do when you want to move on but the wound does not heal?

Throughout the film, the protagonist is stuck in a house that seems to have been wrecked. The daughter is constantly sick. The mother wanders around aimlessly, telling her servants not to move anything around – to keep everything the same as the day her husband disappeared. The servants are always cleaning. In one shot, I suspect they were trying to wipe the blood off the floor.

These scenes and scenarios are evocative of Thailand’s relationship to the Thammasat Massacre. We are sickened by it. Some try to keep the wound from scabbing. Some try to erase it. But try as we may, it’s there. At the end of the movie, blood flowed into the house, covering the floors. Unhealed trauma is bound to overwhelm the present.

If Taiki’s film proves the presence of the horrific past in the now, Jakrawal Nilthamrong’s The Anatomy of Time attempts to expose the meaninglessness of the glorified past.

This movie follows an elderly lady who’s taking care of her dying husband. As she moves through her day-to-day routine, she thinks back to the romantic times they had when they were young.

The core message of the film seems to be the eroding power of time. Unlike Taiki’s thesis on the expansive effects of events, through legacy and memory, Jakrawal illustrates how time erases everything, especially the ephemeral glory of youth.

(Image credit: Cineuropa)

The dying husband was a figure evocative of Thailand’s violent political scene – a military man. In his youth, he strode around in sunglasses, showing off his badges and presents he bought from Europe. He is deeply engaged in the war against communism and holds a condescending attitude towards locals for which he should be working.

The Thai military’s war against the communist insurgency is another brutal nugget of Thai history, suppressed in the memory of the Thai nation.

But unlike Taiki, Jakrawal does not try to excavate this past and lay bare its continuing impact. Rather he focuses on the figure of the military man, contrasting their glorified youths and their old age.

As an old man, the military figure is bed-ridden. He couldn’t control his bladder. His wife has to wipe his feces. When they hire a young caretaker, she discovers his role in past coups and ends up shouting vulgarities at him before leaving. He tries to sit on a marble table in front of a grocery store before the owner berates him for being a “servant of dictators”.

The phrases used in these scenes evoke the political discourse of present days dissidents. Jakrawal is issuing a stern warning to the military men of the present, who still rules the country today. Time erodes, he says. The glory you accumulate today will soon disappear. And once you can no longer hold a gun or beat someone up, you will become utterly meaningless.

Jakrawal’s thesis on time is therefore quite different from Taiki’s. There is an acceptance of time as a unilateral thing. Not only does it move forward like a river, but it also erodes everything in its way.

But interestingly, I feel like Jakrawal may also accept the notion of time as a human invention. While much of his film highlights the degradation of the biological bodies, there is also an idea of the unity of the spiritual self across temporal space.

This is seen in the final sequences when a female character is seen meditating, washing, and sleeping. Her naked older self is contrasted with a sex scene involving her younger self. The only difference between the two is the presence of sexual desire, which emanates from a human subject. But to nature, both bodies were the same.

I also notice that while scenes involving human characters have a constant soundtrack of a ticking clock, the scene involving nature is backgrounded by silence.

Even the eroding progression of time, the loss of glory, and sexual attractions are human inventions.

In a stark turn to a more meta exploration of history and memory, Apichatpong’s Memoria tackles the violent past of Colombia.

One of the most influential directors in Thai cinema, Apichatpong’s Cannes-winning masterpiece Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives is already a thesis on the suppressed memory of the communist insurgency.

His past films were ordered censored by the Thai government. Apichatpong responded by blacking out the censored scenes, drawing attention to the government’s sensitivity towards taboo subjects. He was an artist-activist long before it became popular in Thailand.

His decision to move to a more foreign landscape indicates his growing strength as a filmmaker. Here, he collaborates with Tilda Swinton who gives a moving performance as Jessica, an English ex-pat who sells flowers in the city of Medellín.

(Image credit: The Film Stage)

One night, Jessica was awoken by a mysterious boom. She spends the rest of the movie trying to find out what it was. In her efforts, she came across musician Hernán who tried to help her, only to mysteriously disappear. Later, she meets another Hernán, who gives her an enigmatic answer to her question.

Unlike Taiki who blends the past into the present or Jakrawal who separates and portrays past and present as equals, Apichatpong roots his film in the mundane present with characters haunted by an invisible past.

Colombia, like Thailand, is haunted by a violent history. Simply called La Violencia or The Violence, the ten-year civil war wounded the nation.

In an early sequence of the film, Jessica is walking on a street when the banging sound perhaps caused by an exhaust pipe causes a man to immediately fall to the street, dodging a gunshot. This is a post-traumatic stress disorder. In this sequence alone, Apichatpong suggests the very real impact of collective trauma, imprinted in biologically induced responses.

The sequence also introduces a key motif in the film: a sound without a clear origin. The booming that Jessica hears and the bang of the exhaust pipe represent traces of the past – invisible but still impactful.

Human seeks to understand that which seems impactful but unclear in origin. Jessica seeks out sound engineer Hernán who tries to recreate the boom from her description. Time and time again, Jessica struggles to verbalize these visceral experiences to people around her.

This is the difficulty of writing and telling history. Its impact is experiential but its communication is mediated by symbols and languages. They can never replicate the originating experience.

Towards the end of the film, Jessica meets another Hernán, who appears to be a non-human being. Many suggest that he is an alien, due to Apichatpong’s decision to insert an alien spaceship into one of the final sequences. But I suggest that he is a ghost of someone killed in the Bogotazo riot which wrecked the city of Bogota and left 500 deaths, in April 1948 – the midst of The Violence.

The final sequence shows Jessica connecting with ghost Hernán over the experience. The boom she hears come from the experiences he himself had. Jessica cries as she undergoes Hernán’s pain when he hid from the violence as a child.

Hernán asks why she cries at a memory that is not hers. But of course, this is Apichatpong’s heartfelt conclusion. For all our attempts to retell histories and memories, the most important thing is empathy.

Traumatic events of a nation’s past go through cycles of being suppressed for their dangers and then excavated for their meanings. Lost in this modernist conception of time is the human suffering, the experiences of pain, and the empathy we should have for lives forgotten in scientific historiography.

In an epic conclusion to this accidental trilogy of time, Apichatpong asks us to take seriously our roles as the author of histories and collective memories. For the past is never gone, its eroding power remains, and its subjects are human and hopelessly fallible.