Uncle Boonmee Recalls Thai Censorship

Opinion
EDITORIAL

Published on May 26, 2010

Kudos to director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who became the first Thai filmmaker to win the prestigious Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week. His story of the spiritual belief in reincarnation, "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives", won the top prize for its unique narrative style.

But before the Thai Culture Ministry starts waving the flag in celebration, it should take a minute to recall Apichatpong's comments on the issue of film censorship. After all, strict censorship is obstructive to directors like Apichatpong, discouraging them from exploring innovative themes.

"Uncle Boonmee" tells the story of Thais in the Northeast who believe in spirits and reincarnation. In the same fashion as his previous works, Apichatpong uses a signature whimsical style. The visual journey and soundtrack introduce ordinary Thai life to the world.

However, Apichatpong has been through rough times in ensuring that his visions and interpretations reach his audience. A couple of years ago, he fought bitterly with the local censorship board to keep his work intact. The Thai censors wanted to delete certain scenes by reasoning that they touched upon religion, which is deemed a sensitive subject here.

During a Cannes press event, Apichatpong said that due to the strict local censorship requirements, Thai filmmakers resort to either action movies or comedies instead of touching on subjects such as politics.

Apichatpong is not alone in fighting rigid local censorship. Earlier, "Nak-Prok", a Thai movie about three bandits who disguise themselves as monks, almost did not make it to theatres. The film contained scenes that depicted supposed members of the monkhood engaging in inappropriate behaviour. This despite the fact that audiences are mature enough to understand that these scenes are fictional. Why can't we get over this? It's the same as Hollywood films portraying sex scandals in the Catholic church.

The Thai censorship board has a thick skin when it comes to what's shown in public theatres, whose audiences are supposedly protected by the classification and rating system. Sensitive about many issues, the board turns a blind eye to graphic violence and other destructive scenes seen in almost every TV soap opera by both young and old in their living rooms. While the board imposes strict rules on certain themes by defining them as issues that threaten "moral decency", it allows soaps to feature scenes of rape, sexual harassment and verbal abuse, aired every night as if these are acceptable acts in our society.

Besides this, these state-appointed arbiters come mostly from the security apparatus. They are not filmmakers or people in the film industry, who should be able to provide balanced comments on whether to rate or assign a film to a certain classification.

The Culture Ministry and interested agencies should be more open-minded, to enable directors to explore new themes and creativity. While film scripts are mostly fictional, the directors' interpretations can give insight or prompt an audience to look at issues with more understanding. This should enable people to better understand society and themselves.

It's inevitable that censorship will exist, but there must be a transparent process for the censorship board's decision-making. Likewise, audience response is the most important factor for directors when deciding whether to explore certain sensitive themes. For instance, "United 93", a Hollywood film based on the 9/11 plane hijacks, was released only when the filmmakers felt that audiences were ready to watch - almost five years after the real incident. Any sensible director would exercise voluntary restraint on certain issues that might not be well received by some audiences.

The maturity of a society can be reflected in the movies that it produces. It is welcome that Thai films have flourished partly because their directors are able to explore human emotions and themes such as gender, history and spiritual belief. Nevertheless, more needs to be done to support freedom of expression and the creativity of directors. Thailand has a culture and tradition that inspires local artists to explore. And local filmmakers don't ask for anything more than space to experiment with visions and ideas.
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May 26, 2010 07:49 am (Thai local time)
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