- WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW -
It’s a piece that explores a uniquely Thai perspective: that of a man so caught up in big-city life and in the quest for fame and fortune that he loses sight of his humanity, until, during an unexpected visit to a small town, he meets a spunky girl with a heart of gold who chides him for his screwed-up priorities and shows him the simple pleasures of everyday life and oh wait that’s every plot to every Western romantic comedy ever.
Of course, it’s still a cultural education, given that
that’s where Thai culture is right now – the conflict between modern urban
ambition and traditional community values.
If that’s explored in the same way that Western films explore it, that
still says interesting things about the relationship between the two
cultures. And from what our teacher has
said, The Melody is a pretty good
example of what Thai audiences look for in a film. There’s a cute central couple, a sappy love
story, big emotions, and an uplifting resolution after an otherwise tragic
ending.
Oh, yeah, speaking of that.
It turns out that the spunky girl with a heart of gold is terminally
ill, and is refusing treatment, preferring to devote the remainder of her life
to inspiring the protagonist.
A lot has been written about the phenomenon of women being
killed off, maimed, raped, or otherwise victimised in fiction, solely for the
purpose of motivating the male hero. (In
comic books, this is known as “women in refrigerators” syndrome, after a
particularly infamous example.) So I’ll
just sum up briefly why it bothers me:
Name one movie, any movie, in which a brilliant but abrasive female
artist had her life turned around by a warm, caring small-town man who acted as
her muse for her vitally important work, and who then died tragically,
inspiring her to greater heights of genius.
Yeah. Not so much.
Oh, sure, city girl meets down-home boy is a trope in
itself, but that’s different. In those
films, the woman’s work is most likely to be presented as a soul-sucking
distraction, to be laid aside by the end of the film. The guy is also much more likely to survive
the ending, and to head off into the sunset with the heroine – not to lie,
pallid and angelic, on a hospital bed while making her promise that she’ll
continue her vital work without him.
Also, I liked this movie better when it was called Sweet November. At least that version had Jason Isaacs in
drag.
What I did really enjoy about The Melody, though, was the visual love letter to northern
Thailand. The movie is set in the border
town of Mae Hong Son, not far from Chiang Mai.
Mae Hong Son provides a stunning backdrop – every other shot seems to be
a slow, breathtaking pan across the mountains – but it’s also a character in
its own right in the film, and the protagonist is shown falling in love with
the town as well as with the girl. I got
a real kick out of watching all the aspects of northern Thai culture I’ve
discovered over the last few months being explored, with real respect and
affection, on the big screen. The
heroine leads the hero through an ethnic hill tribe market; they go hiking in
the mountains; they send up floating lanterns together (although they’re tiny
things borne aloft by balloons, instead of the smoke-belching quasi-Zeppelins we
sent up at Loy Krathong); and you can even hear the market traders speaking
northern slang in the background – Kop
khun jao instead of Kop khun kha. It drove home the difference between
northern and southern Thailand, and made me miss Chiang Mai.
(Also, there was popcorn.
There’s a limit to how much I’m going to bitch about any experience
where I get popcorn.)
And now, for your entertainment: The
Melody in fifteen minutes. :)
BOY: Grrrr! I am an asshole about the fact that I haven’t
produced anything original in over a year, and all my fangirls are deserting me
for ridiculously effeminate boybands in oversized shades.
RIDICULOUSLY EFFEMINATE BOYBAND: Whazzup, bee-yotches?
BOY: In a pathetic
attempt to convince myself that my career isn’t in the toilet, I’m going to
abandon it completely and take an impromptu road trip up to Adorable Northern
Town, because someone called a Bangkok radio station from there to request one
of my songs.
[For some reason, Adorable Northern Town looks the way
Greenwich Village always does in mid-90s romantic comedies, and every business
on the street is a coffeeshop.
Eventually, BOY finds a piano shop where GIRL is playing the piano.]
BOY: You there! Give up your pointless life in this
assbiscuit of a town and come be part of my band.
GIRL: Bitch,
please. I earned more piano trophies
before I was twelve than you have in your entire life.
BOY: Oh, you did NOT
just go there.
GIRL: And now I’m
going to kidnap you in my adorable VW Bug and break your spirit, so that you
will realise the error of your ways and come to appreciate the value of
community and human affection and the attractively priced products offered for
sale in hilltribe markets. Adorable
cancer kids! Glomp him!
CANCER KIDS: RAWR WE
CRAVE HUMAN FLESH!
BOY: AHHHH GET THEM
OFF ME GET THEM OFF ME!
GIRL: Teehee!
THE LITTLEST CANCER PATIENT:
*throws up on BOY’S shoes*
BOY: For some reason
this makes me spontaneously stop being an asshole.
[Extended scenes of BOY and GIRL caring tenderly for the
CANCER KIDS, including teaching them to sing, playing games with them, and
supporting the efforts of one boy of about seven to creepily perve on THE
LITTLEST CANCER PATIENT.]
LITTLE CANCER BOY: I
want you to be my girlfriend! Let’s
totally reproduce the spaghetti-sucking scene from Lady and the Tramp!
THE LITTLEST CANCER PATIENT:
Okay, but only if I can use that scenario to trap BOY and GIRL into
doing the same, thus carrying out my great purpose in life – as a plot point in
the love story of the two main characters!
ALL THE ADULTS IN THE ROOM:
We are surprisingly okay with all of this!
[Her purpose in life achieved, THE LITTLEST CANCER PATIENT
abruptly develops a nosebleed moments before the big benefit concert, is rushed
to the hospital, and succumbs to the always-fatal Offscreenitis. A doctor comes and delivers news of her death
to BOY, GIRL, and THE LITTLEST CANCER PATIENT’S parents, who are devastated,
despite having basically abandoned their child to be raised by a pair of
twenty-something pop musicians. No,
seriously – they make a plot point out of how the kid’s mother never came to
see her, and then we never find out why.]
[Meanwhile, back at the ranch…]
NOTE FROM GIRL TO BOY:
Hi, could you come see me in the hospital? I kind of forgot to tell you that I have
leukaemia and two months to live LOL.
BOY: Tell me
everything about her condition!
DOCTOR: Certainly,
random pop idol with no provable connection to the patient! Basically, we could totally shoot her up with
some stem cells and she’d be fine, but she’s being a whiny moron about it for
no adequately explained reason.
GIRL: Yeah, they
could save my life and all, but it would probably hurt a lot.
BOY: …seriously? You do realise that the guy said “curable”,
right?
GIRL: Yeah, but – the
ouchie.
BOY: It would hurt
worse that dying?
GIRL: Sometimes, it
is better to accept death that to fight to live.
BOY: I find your
idiocy strangely magnetic.
[Extended scenes of BOY and GIRL falling slowly in love,
while enjoying the many tourist attractions Northern Thailand has to
offer: floating lanterns, hill tribe
markets, fields of sunflowers, and mountain roads so twisty that they make
people violently ill. Also, they ride in
the back of a truck full of cabbage, and proceed to use the cabbage in a
variety of provocative and flirtatious ways, probably rendering the poor
farmer’s entire stock unsellable by the time they reach their destination. They eventually end up at a restaurant, where
BOY scrunches up his face and reluctantly consents to try some of the super-exotic and bizarre Northern Thai
food, to the immense confusion of all the foreigners in the audience.]
FOREIGNERS IN THE AUDIENCE:
But… that looks like what I just had for dinner in Bangkok the other
day…
THAIS IN THE AUDIENCE:
STFU IT IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
RANDOM RESTAURANT PATRONS:
LOL, that BOY is so totally a washed-up loser! For some reason, this is our reaction to a
young pop star who disappeared at the height of his popularity, and we do not
at all wonder what could have happened to him, nor does it seem there has been
any effort to find him in the past few weeks/months.
BOY: ZOMG STRANGERS
HATE ME MY LIFE IS OVER.
GIRL: Yeah, well, my
life is ACTUALLY over, so sit your five-dollar ass down before I make change!
BOY: And it never
occurred to you that you were choosing to
die, dumbass?
GIRL: *sigh* Fine. If you do all the work for me of hunting down
some stem cells, making sure they’re a match, paying for the treatment, and
supporting me throughout my ordeal, I suppose
I could do you a favour and keep living past the age of 23.
BOY: … wait, what do
you mean “hunt down”…?
[So, yeah, it turns out that they don’t actually have any stem cells to give her, which
possibly should have been something the doctor could have mentioned
earlier. But not to fear, because…]
BOY: Guess what! I wrote a cheesy pop ballad about us! Also, with my MASSIVE POP STAR INFLUENCE I
have managed to secure you some stem cells!
GIRL: … really? That’s all it took?
BOY: Sure, my homeboy
sorted us out.
GIRL: How?
BOY: Oh, I don’t
know, connections, funding research, kidnapping and murdering pregnant women,
you want the cells or not?
[But oh noes!]
DOCTOR:
Unfortunately, while these cells are a match, they’re taken from the
placenta, so there aren’t enough of them to treat an adult patient.
BOY: WHY CAN’T YOU
TREAT HER WITH THEM?!
DOCTOR: … because of
the thing I just said?
BOY: WHATEVER.
DOCTOR: But, since
you’re the protagonist, and a pop star, and it was your homeboy who committed serial murders to get the cells, we
thought we’d allow you to choose which of two innocent cancer kids should
receive the cells instead of your dying girlfriend.
BOY: Panicking at the
thought of making a life-or-death medical decision I am in no way qualified to
make somehow reaffirms that I have rediscovered my humanity!
DOCTOR: Fine, if
that’s what you want, we will never resolve this plotline or reference it ever
again. I was just trying to do something nice by allowing you the chance to make a
decision that would spell certain doom for a small cancer-stricken child. Sheesh.
[Once again, BOY and GIRL embark on enjoying all that
spectacularly beautiful Northern Thailand has to offer, while continuing to
fall for each other. This includes a lot
of mountain climbing, which of course is ideal for end-stage cancer patients. Finally, one day, while watching the sun rise
over the mountains, they consummate their relationship…]
BOY:
*yawn-stretch-sidehug*
GIRL: *rests her head
on his shoulder*
OLDER THAIS IN THE AUDIENCE:
HOLD IT RIGHT THERE WHAT IS THIS A PORNO?
[BOY eventually remembers that he’s been a missing person
for months…]
BOY: ’Sup, dude.
PRODUCER: HOLY SHIT
WE PRACTICALLY HAD YOU DECLARED LEGALLY DEAD!
BOY: Well, once
you’ve finished being all hysterical and
embarrassing and non-Thai about it, I need you to organise a benefit concert that
will fix everything in my life somehow.
[At the benefit concert that will fix everything in BOY’S
life somehow…]
BOY [on phone]: I
really wanted you to sing the cheesy pop ballad about us with me! But I guess that as long as you’re here in
the audience –
GIRL [on phone]: Yeah,
that isn’t happening, because I’m just really busy with work and the cancer
kids and being irrepressible in a Holly Golightly-esque manner and not totally
dying in the hospital this exact moment even as we speak, why do you ask?
BOY [on phone]: Well,
that isn’t at all suspicious. Just make
sure you watch the livestream of the concert on your Mac laptop, because I’ll
be playing all those songs I composed using an iPhone musical app, and in the
meantime I can talk to you on my iPhone and look at your beautiful face in all
the iPhone digital pictures we took!
iPHONE: Girlfriend
dying of leukaemia and lying about why she’s unable to attend the most
important concert of your career?
There’s an app for that!
[BOY goes out and performs his song, which admittedly sounds
a lot less cheesy backed by a full orchestra.
Then again, the McDonald’s jingle would sound less cheesy backed by a
full orchestra. GIRL goes into cardiac
arrest during the song, and her mother starts screaming, and the music continues
as the doctors try desperately to revive her, and there really is no way to
make this bit funny.]
BOY’S HOMEBOY: *holds
up a sign at the back of the concert hall*
SIGN: We got more
stem cells! Please, for the love of all
that is holy, don’t ask about the stains on my shirt.
IRONY: *crashes
through the ceiling and flattens the audience*
[We pan over the girl’s body, from her cheek, with a single
tear running down it, to her hand. Which
twitches. Because… I guess she’s a
zombie now? Never really explored. Anyway, BOY hears the news immediately after
the concert, and goes to the hospital.]
GIRL’S MOTHER: My
daughter asked me to give you this song she composed. She called it The Melody.
TITLE DROP: *crushes
those members of the audience who escaped the IRONY earlier*
BOY: I will love her
forever and cherish her memory, even as I pass off her vastly superior
composition as my own music!
PICTURESQUE NORTHERN THAILAND: *preens itself in the background as a final
montage rolls*
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