Mysterious Object at Noon
Dokfa nai meuman (2000)
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
The premise is simple: Interview unsuspecting ordinary people and get them to contribute to an on-going narration of a story à la Exquisite Corpse. The story begins beautifully but gets messed up and inconclusive along the way.
But the story wasn’t the point. It was merely a means to an end, a tool to unveil the subtleties of ordinary lives. Contribution to the story, imagination of the people and the way it was delivered varied vastly as the film proceeds from people to people, noticeably a startling difference as the film crew moves from the rural to the urban.
It’s a fluid transition from documentary to drama to documentary. And this is where, despite how loose the film ended up to be, the beauty lies. And Apichatpong Weerasethakul remains my favourite Thai director.
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