There is a scene midway that has a father mixing paints and giving a bevy of excited children a colour each. He tells them each to paint a segment of a bus destroyed by a bomb and to make it vivid. It is a scene I seldom see in war movies which are more interested in showing you mass destruction and extreme cruelty. The scene makes absolute sense because these are people who still crave for a semblance of normalcy in their dire lives and the instilling of hope in their children is still vital, perhaps even more important in those trying times. A while later, the documentary’s director, Waad Al-Khateab, points her Sony video-cam at a girl, probably about five years old, and asks what happened to the bus. The little girl smiles and says it was destroyed by a “cluster bomb”. How in heaven’s name does she know the term “cluster bomb”?

For Sama is a love letter “written” by a mother for her baby daughter Sama (it means sky in Arabic). It documents her confessional hope for Syria and the battle-ravaged city of Aleppo,. It is a 100-minute documentary of unflinching horror and the senselessness of war, made with the sheer passion of a rebel and the undying love of a mother, wanting her daughter to understand why she continued to live in a city when they could die at any moment.

Waad Al-Khateab and co-director Edward Watts have crafted a film with an escalating narrative drive. It begins with a 26-year-old girl entering Aleppo University with rising hope in 2012. With just a handphone, she filmed the fervent protests against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, probably feeling jubilant that a renewed future is close at hand. However, any hope for that gave way to atrocious crimes against humanity as the corrupt regime and its allies refused to yield, pelting the city with ordnance and bombs till 2017 when the rebels finally surrendered.

The story of the death of a city and innocence is told in flashbacks with weary cut and dried voice-overs by Waad, explaining to her daughter why she and her husband Hamza, a doctor and freedom fighter, stayed behind. The film would act as testament and legacy for Sama if she and Hamza don’t make it.

The film is not a downer throughout the runtime. There are scenes of levity as Hamza and Waad find love and get married. In another scene, their neighbour quips that their life resembles a soap opera with explosions and you will feel her joy when her husband surprises her with a persimmon. As much as there are harrowing scenes of death and destruction, there are also many moving scenes of familial and human connections. But it is those unflinching scenes of horror that you will never ever forget.

Waad relentlessly documents everything at ground zero and the hospital, the nexus of suffering. The self-taught journalist shoots everything, never evading her Sony-cam from the horrific scenes of carnage. A scene of two brothers covered in dust, carrying their dead youngest brother to the hospital is particularly heart wrenching. The footages are so in-your-face, so you-are-there that you forget you are watching a film until someone breaks the fourth wall, like how a grieving mother screams into the camera “why are you doing this?” amidst the tragedy of losing her young son. For Sama also has a centerpiece that in my humble opinion is the Scene of the Year – my heart broke into a million pieces and an eternal minute later my heart melded together and leapt with sheer joy. It is a marvellous and magical scene that is not engineered, demonstrating the undying spirit of human beings. You will know it when you see it.

This is a soul-shattering film; it feels epic, yet intimate, also putting you right smack in the midst of harrowing pain. When the house-lights came on, I sat in my seat stunned out of my senses, counting my blessings. Yes, it will do that to you. If you are reading this it means you and I have it a lot better than the people in this film, who don’t all make it out alive.

Like everyone, I have seen my fair share of war movies. In my humble opinion, For Sama dwarfs them all in terms of honesty and authenticity. No amount of gloss, sugarcoating and emotional manipulation can reproduce the fervid wallop the film sends to your very core. Sama may be too young to understand the film, but not us. This is essential viewing and a strong contender for Best Documentary of the Year.

Written by Daniel Chiam

Being a creative writing teacher, I am a firm advocate that the beginning and ending of any narrative piece is crucial. This little English lesson has also permeated into many areas of my life, including my love life: how one begins and ends a relationship is also significant. I was at the tail end of a seven-year relationship with a girl who two-timed me. I knew it was game over and I had a choice: I could make it really bad for her or I could let her go gently. I chose the latter. I was not under the illusion I was a saint – when a relationship breaks down, both parties have a part to play. On our last date, I brought her to the exact spot where I confessed my love for her seven years ago, a bench outside a lecture theatre at National University of Singapore, and we had a heartwarming time chatting and reminiscing the great moments we shared together. Thinking back, I thought it was the most fitting way to end a relationship that both of us have put in so much and it was a good emotional closure for both of us. It was a farewell that gave us hope and set us free to love again. 

In the Thai movie Happy Old Year, while Jean (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying) is doing a major decluttering of her house to convert it into a home office, she finds some items that belonged to Aim (Sunny Suwanmethanont), her ex-boyfriend. Three years ago, Jean just packed up and left the country without giving Aim a reason. Their relationship never did have an emotional closure. It may be time to do the right thing now.

Watch the trailer first:

You wouldn’t be faulted for catching some zany rom-com vibes and you would be utterly wrong. Just like writer-director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s Heart Attack (2015), Happy Old Year is marketed like a rom-com, but it isn’t in the strictest sense.

The movie is divided into chapters, each detailing an aspect of decluttering. The KonMari’s method seems easy on paper: anything that doesn’t spark joy just say “thank you” and throw it away. It is easy when the things are irrelevant, but it gets tough when they are tied to a memory. This is where the movie soars – its examination of the elusive concept of memory, its selectiveness and how it is tied in an ironclad bond to histories and emotions. Thamrongrattanarit shows us the different ways we deal with painful memories through Jean, her mother and all the other myriad characters. Jean seems ruthless, wanting to follow a strict timeline to get everything out and give the home a minimalist look, while the mother is resolute with her selective amnesia in not wanting to change the status quo. The scene where Jean and her mother get into a heated argument is especially poignant and heartbreaking. 

How expositions and plot details are doled out is immaculately handled. Even the music has a minimalist feel which ties in to the theme of minimalism. The possibly rekindled romance is but a part of the whole story and I wouldn’t even say it is the spine. The typical rom-com arc of “will they or will they not” takes a backseat as the scenes of Jean and Aim play out in surprising ways. 

The topic of memory is prone to be mishandled, but Thamrongrattanarit’s hand is assured as he delves into the different notions of the elusive concept. Through all the storytelling, he even gives the movie a spellbinding minimalist vibe and makes it compellingly relatable. The characters feel lived in and authentic. I was rooting for Jean to get the emotional closure she doesn’t know she needs, just like me.

Written by Daniel Chiam

There’s a game I love to play when I am out galavanting. If I chance upon an item that has no rhyme or reason strewn on the street, I would ask my wife to tell me the story of how that thing (be it one side of a slipper or a bouquet of flowers sitting on top of a dustbin and so on) landed up there. We would both take turns to extrapolate a story and usually it will be a sad one. The game takes on a different dimension when we see an interesting looking person exhibiting an unusual behaviour or carrying an eye-popping object.

I’m Livin’ It has lots of despondent characters whose lives are at an impasse, living on desperate straits; they are just not livin’ the dream anymore. And when you see these homeless people, the game is not fun anymore. Trivialising their hard life is wrong. Nobody wants to live in abject poverty and the circumstances that drove these folks to spend every night in McDonald’s, sleeping while sitting down, is what I’m Livin’ It is about.

Let’s get something clear from the start – there is no redemption arc here. This is no The Pursuit of Happyness (2006). Not every character makes it out of the “tunnel of hopelessness”. No one will, in one moment of crystal clarity, discover a steadfast willpower to lift themselves out of the mire. They are all stuck on the hamster wheel, running tirelessly because they think that if they stop, they die. It sounds like the bleakest of stories but credit has to be showered on first-time director Wong Hing-fan who has crafted a film that humanised the motley crew of characters, making them memorable.

Bowen (Aaron Kwok) is the de facto leader with the street smarts. Once a top finance honcho, he was arrested for embezzlement and after his incarceration he could not find a job. He galvanises the plethora of “invisible” folks with well-meaning ways, but he himself is crippled with utter shame that stops him from going home. Family honour is a running theme here.

The motley crew consists of a teenage slacker (Zeno Woo) who is addicted to his handheld game and ran away from home after a banal argument; an elderly man (Alex Man) who occupies the same seat and has a different reason why he is there every night; a motor-mouth caricature artist (Cheung Tat-ming), a young mother (Cya Liu) and her young daughter whose sob story will probably be hard to comprehend by western audiences. Rounding up the group of pathetic souls is Jane (Miriam Yeung), a has-been small nightclub singer, who carried a torch for Bowen from way way back.

This is a greatest hits compilation of sad stories and demolished hopes. It can easily be episodic as it goes from character to character, but Ja Poon’s screenplay traverses the boulevard of broken dreams with ease and with an eye out for details. In the storyteller’s measured strokes, the movie doesn’t become cheapened with cheap histrionics. There is a sense of realism in the characters and you would remember them long after the movie has ended.

Aaron Kwok stands out in a self-effacing role and he looks believable in the part of a man imprisoned by his own guilt. Miriam Yeung is also a stand-out and she embodies the everyday woman who has seen better days perfectly. However, for this reviewer, the chemistry between them lacks spark. What should have been subtle fluctuations and evolving graduations between the two leads is somehow missing, at least for me.

Movies about poor people are usually of two types – they are often about how non-poor people are redeemed by coming to the aid of poor people or they are about how poor people, in a twist of fate, change their destiny through sheer will. I’m Livin’ It doesn’t do either. It lays out the harsh reality that most of the time poor people continue to be stuck in quicksand and die comfortless deaths. The ending here, though hard to watch, is right on the nose. Don’t be poor, is probably one of the more important messages here, but I feel it is more important to think about what can be done to address the plight of the homeless.

Written by Daniel Chiam

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service… I am sure everyone has their favourite and this is mine…

My Neighbour Totoro has become one of the most beloved family films of all time. Interestingly, the first time I saw it wasn’t in its original opening year of 1988. At that time I was still in the army and all things masculine. What I presumed was a cheesy anime of an outlandish grey creature didn’t entice me one bit. The first time I saw the anime was from a Studio Ghibli DVD boxset a few years later, but I distinctively recalled that it didn’t floor me. It was in 1998, one rainy night in my university, during a screening in a theatre, I finally ‘got’ it. When the lights came on, I could see tears and smiles on a lot of my classmates’ faces.

What did I ‘get’ that night? I finally understood why it’s revered as a masterpiece for a cartoon. It didn’t use the traditional narrative structure and the usual plot devices to tell its story. This film has NO villains. NO fight scenes. NO angry disbelieving parents. NO suspicious characters with ulterior motives. NO red herrings. NO plot twists and turns. NO fighting between the two sisters (in fact during the first hour both sisters’ moods and attitudes are similar. If it’s Hollywood their behavior will be the opposite, acting as counterpoints). NO scary monsters. NO lesson learned arcs for main characters. On paper it looks like a disaster because the ingredients for a story are just not there. But oh man… the film works so well. If you can’t marvel at it, it is because of one of three reasons – you are immature, you have a heart of stone or you have just broken up with someone.

The film does not work on the premise of threats or conflicts but on situations. It is suffused with the joy of country living (no long faces here, complaining of boredom). It unites the unique vision of Miyazaki with a feel-good tale of childlike wonder, true originality and pure enchantment. You will find nothing emotionally manipulative here.

Since that evening at the university, I have seen it at least five more times and every time I would still notice stuff that I have missed in my last viewing. Last night I saw an early scene where Satsuki first lay eyes on their new rundown house and shook on a wooden pillar. Debris falls, she laughs heartily. Mei follows her sis and does the same, debris falls more violently. Everybody, including their dad laughs. If this is any other movie, a foreshadowing doom music will ring out, dad’s face contorted in mortal danger and to seal the deal, dad will sprout some warning to the kids. I also noticed in this latest viewing that ghosts, goblins and boogeyman are mentioned but the words are uttered in a sense of wonder, not of doom. Try also to name a cartoon with a sick parent/adult (I know… Pixar’s Up)… there are not many and I am going to say the ill adult is used as the focus point to tell the bigger story. In this film, illness is treated as a matter of fact.

I love this movie. It is a film that teaches you how the world should be and how we should live and want to live our life.

My friends for life…

Written by Daniel Chiam

Lately, I have been watching a lot of movies that share something in common – they are narratives that make me stare in disbelief at figure heads of authority and many a time I would hurl expletives at the scenes of gross miscarriage of justice and the failure of the legal system. Most recently it was Netflix’s When They See Us and prior before that it was the Sheep Without a Shepherd, a Chinese remake of Drishyam (2013), but what started it all was Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell. This is a David versus Goliath tragedy – a man was celebrated as a hero and a few days later he was vilified by the press and the FBI as a terrorist.

It was a sensational story in 1996: Richard Jewell, a security guard at the Olympic Games in Atlanta finds a bomb and saves hundreds of lives due to his quick thinking (and probably his set ways). A few days later, he turns from hero to villain being accused of masterminding the bombing. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.

I like how Eastwood paints Jewell – he is no paragon. He may worship the men in blue and sees himself as a police officer, but he oversteps his boundary in barging in on college kids “Mickey Mousing” around or even stopping cars on the roads for breaking traffic laws. He is a social misfit, a square peg to a round hole, always saying more than what is required especially if it is to people in the law enforcement. Jewell sees the world in black and white, following rules to a T as long as they have been written in the book. Owning a whole cache of legally purchased weapons doesn’t help his cause too. 

Paul Walter Hauser plays Richard Jewell and it’s a performance that feels genuinely lived-in. He is so good that I thought they actually cast a daft beatnik of an oddball in the role. Later, I would IMDb him and realised I have seen him most recently in I, Tonya and Blackkklansman. This is a role that finally puts him in the spotlight and the empathy emanating from his performance will leave an indelible mark on the most jaded movie-goer. In my humble opinion, he should have been rewarded with a nomination for Best Actor.

Hauser is supported by an able cast that includes Kathy Bates who plays Jewell’s loving mother and Sam Rockwell who plays his attorney, Watson Bryant. It’s the latter relationship that is engagingly portrayed. In fact, the movie begins with Jewell and Bryant in an office years before the heinous events. Bryant nicknamed Jewell “Radar” who was then an office guy, but he will become a steadfast believer of Jewell’s innocence. Rockwell can play these irascible but redeeming roles in his sleep. He is the voice of reason and the true north of the moral compass as Jewell becomes victimised and character-assassinated.

The twin Goliaths here are represented by Jon Hamm’s FBI agent and Olivia Wilde’s journalist Kathy Scruggs. Theirs is a blow by blow method on how to “kill” someone in the public eye. Unscrupulous and despicable, till the point I felt like stepping inside the screen to punch them. That usually means the storyteller got the mechanics right. Of the two, Wilde definitely drew the shorter stick with a thankless role, but kudos to her for a good performance that hit a nerve in the last act. While reading up on her character, I found out that both Jewell and Scruggs died very young. Till the last months of her life, the events that happened and her part in them still plagued her. The modern society can be very unforgiving and it is the same in any city.

Eastwood’s direction is not showy, editing feels invisible and nothing will take you away from the main story. He allows the scenes to breathe and none overstays their welcome. I hardly felt two hours pass and long after that the characters continue to stay in my mind. 

The later part of Eastwood’s career sees him train his erudite eye on lone heroes, deconstructing the idea of heroism and what it entails. Richard Jewell definitely fits like a glove into his oeuvre and it is as relevant today as it was in 1996. 

Written by Daniel Chiam

“Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good… so far so good… so far so good. How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land!”

For some reason, watching the unbelievable shenanigans that transpired on screen made me think of the above quote from La Haine (1995) which resonated with me. This is a drama about housewives dressed to the nines in couture regalia with their hands in every pie, and when they are going down in flames, they are most worried about how they look.

Sky Castle follows the lives of 4 women living in the luxurious SKY Castle neighborhood. They try to make their husbands more successful and raise their children like princes and princesses; getting them into the top schools is their primary aim and they are willing to do anything to make sure it happens.

Han Seo-Jin (Yum Jung-Ah) is married to orthopedic surgeon Kang Joon-Sang (Jung Joon-Ho). They have two daughters. Han Seo-Jin seems to have a perfect life, but she has a secret.

Lee Soo-Im (Lee Tae-Ran) is a writer of children’s books. She holds a deep affection and consideration for people. Lee Soo-Im is married to neurosurgeon Hwang Chi-Young (Choi Won-Young). They have a son, Hwang Woo-Joo (Kang Chan-Hee).

No Seung-Hye (Yoon Se-Ah) is married to law school professor Cha Min-Hyuk (Kim Byung-Chul). Her husband talks about justice and happiness, but he hides a different side. One with having extreme egoism. They have two sons.

Jin Jin-Hee (Oh Na-Ra) comes from a wealthy family. Her father owns buildings. Jin Jin-Hee admires Han Seo-Jin and tries to copy what she does. Like Han Seo-Jin, Jin Jin-Hee is married to an orthopedic surgeon, Woo Yang-Woo (Jo Jae-Yun).

Han Seo Jin hires a coordinator Kim Joo Young (Kim Seo-Hyeong) to have her daughter Kang Ye Seo (Kim Hye-Yoon), a model student admitted to Seoul University Medical School. Following a tragic incident in the castle, the fates of the families are tangled and new revelations dawn.

IMDb’s synopsis asseverates Sky Castle as a satire, but I just couldn’t see this as a great one. For satire to work, it uses irony, humour and exaggeration to hold human nature up to criticism and scorn. A good satire pokes fun at the powers that be; sometimes creating a drive for social change. A successful satire has the uncanny ability to put you within the narrative; you laughed but you will realise you are laughing at yourself. Sky Castle wasn’t able to do that last bit. Yes, it does have gross exaggeration of human behaviour, ridiculous humour (only from episode 4 onwards) and some painful irony, but Sky Castle is almost vulgar in its portrayal of characters. It’s must-win-at-all-cause human behaviour dialled up to eleven with little art. However, it is prodigiously entertaining in the way it presents a menagerie of the most despicable behaviour of parents and the worst parenting techniques ever. The missus and my eyes were glued to the screen waiting to see how they would shoot themselves in the foot, and I got goosebumps watching the opening theme. The clever play with light and shadow on the actors’ faces showcases the best and worst of them.

Being in the education line, this Kdrama hits close to home. I see variations of this behaviour in parents who send their children to me, but thankfully most of these parents do not put impossible demands on their kids and me. They just want to give their children a step up in life. What is depicted on screen may be South Korea, but the pressure cooker atmosphere of education is also very real in my country.

The acting is fine wine here. All the women are delineated with each other and they are defined uniquely. Seo-Jin’s arc is well-drawn and you can feel her gradual realisation of what she has done to destroy her daughter’s life and also why she has to do what she did – lie. R.E.M. says Everybody Hurts, but I think it is even more correct to say everybody lies. You will not condone what she did, but you will understand why she did it.

I also like to watch Seung-Hye’s arc and she is the earliest one to realise she is wrong to stand by her husband who pushes their two sons to criminal levels. I love how Yoon Se-Ah plays her – always careful about what expression is written on her face and her rigid posture exudes a sense of guardedness. So when the heartbreak comes in one huge tidal wave, the facade falls down like bricks. Her interplay with her husband Cha Min-Hyuk reaches sublimity in the end as she finds her inner woman. It was a huge hurrah for womenfolk who had long hidden under their husbands’ long shadow. But my fave character is most definitely Professor Cha; Kim Byung-Chul plays him with such relish. The man gives Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs new meaning. For him, education is a battlefield and your job as a student is to not just be the best but to eviscerate all the competition. Seeing him get his comeuppance is one of the most satisfying feelings ever. There are many other outstanding actors here, and I should let you discover them on your own.

One of the missteps here is a sharp turn in the narrative from episode 16. While reading up, I realised due to the immense popularity of the drama the writer extended it by 4 episodes. It was essentially a whodunnit arc that I wouldn’t say is detrimental to the narrative, but I do feel that sharp turn that didn’t quite sit down well with the rest of the narrative. It felt like an odd change of pace.

Sky Castle has one huge plethora of toxic characters, but just because they are noxious doesn’t mean you can’t relate or love them. This is one of the cornerstones of great dramas and there is genius to be found here. Watching this is like having an intense argument with your loved ones; bridges are burned and no amount of time and effort can bring everything back to its original state. You will be immersed in the lives of these toxic individuals who are brought together by the need to succeed at all cause and you can’t help but put your own real-world problems into perspective. You may dislike them, but you can’t help but understand them. If the intense family soap opera could be framed, this would go very well on the walls of The Louvre.

I like what Woo-Joo said to his parents after going through the worst grinder ever and he realises education isn’t everything, it doesn’t define him. These following words spoken by him resonate with me…

“Power… doesn’t come from where I graduate from. Who I am, what kind of person I am and what I live for. When all that is clear, isn’t that where power comes from?”

Written by Daniel Chiam