Film Space schedule

At Film Space on Saturdays at 7 pm

 

March is “The Month of Disastrous Life” at Film Space. 

 

Film Space is to the right and in the back of the CMU Art Museum, in the Media Arts and Design building across from the ballet school. Showings are in a classroom on the second floor or on the roof, weather permitting. A contribution is requested in the donation box at the entrance – you should leave at least 20 baht. Well worth supporting.

At Film Space Saturday, March 20, 7 pm:  Requiem for a Dream (2000) by Darren Aronofsky – 102 mins – US, Drama. Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans.The hopes and dreams of four ambitious people are shattered when their drug addictions begin spiraling out of control. Rated R in the US for intense depiction of drug addiction, graphic sexuality, strong language, and some violence. Generally favorable reviews: 68/68 out of 100.

 

Right: the director with Ellen Burstyn

 

Rotten Tomatoes: Consensus:Though the movie may be too intense for some to stomach, the wonderful performances and the bleak imagery are hard to forget.

 

For his follow-up to his darkly brilliant debut, Pi, director Darren Aronofsky chose to adapt a tough and meaty piece of work: Hubert Selby's 1968 novel Requiem for a Dream, a dark spiral into the abyss of barren fantasies doomed to extinction. However, in Aronofsky's frenetic, visionary, unique, and disturbing style lies the perfect setting for this story of four people whose intertwined lives are filled with eternally hopeful despair. This is a different sort of horror film. Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) and Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly) are lovers in Brooklyn with dreams of setting up a small business and spending the rest of their lives in love--their version of the American dream. The two are also desperate heroin addicts, a compulsion that darkens their lives and leads Harry to repeatedly pawn his mother's television. His mother, Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), is addicted to television, which is why she keeps replacing the stolen set. One day she receives a call from her favorite show, the surreal Tappy Tibbons Show, and learns that she has been selected to appear on an upcoming broadcast. When she can't fit into her best red dress, her doctor prescribes diet pills (uppers), to which she swiftly and painfully becomes addicted. Harry's cohort, an intelligent hustler named Tyrone (Marlon Wayans), completes the foursome. With its unflinching dissection of addiction, Requiem for a Dream is a psychologically disturbing, visually captivating depiction of lost hope. The last half hour of the film is among the most harrowing of any film ever made. 

 

Rolling Stone, Peter Travers: No one interested in the power and magic of movies should miss it.

 

Philadelphia Inquirer, Desmond Ryan: Aronofsky has fashioned a chilling vision that lives up to the caustic irony of its title and gives us a nightmare that is not lightly forgotten.

 

Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman: May be the first movie to fully capture the way that drugs dislocate us from ourselves.

 

At Film Space Saturday, March 27, 7 pm:  Transistor Love Story / Monrak Transistor / มนต์รักทรานซิสเตอร์ (1999) by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang – 90 mins – Thai, Comedy/ Drama/ Musical/ Romance. Phaen is a suburban young man with a great love for music. He never misses a chance to show off his voice at temple fairs in his village. It is at one of the fairs that he meets and falls in love with Sadao. On their wedding day, Phaen gives Sadao a transistor radio that the new family loves, and it also gives Phaen many a daydream of becoming a famous singer himself. Soon, Sadao is pregnant and it is hard for Phaen to leave home, but he has to enter military service. While there, he enters a singing contest, and winds up first runner-up. So he decides to leave the service and heads for Bangkok to follow his dream. He spends two years in a band that never goes anywhere, and eventually is forced to work in a sugarcane plantation. But a fight causes him to lose his job. As things go from bad to worse, he recalls his transistor radio with fondness, for it evokes in his mind much better and more peaceful times, when dreams were still possible.

 

IMDb viewer: The acting, cinematography and sound would be enough to make any movie stand out, but it's the story that really puts Monrak Transistor at the top of the pile. It takes the characters (and the viewer) in quite unexpected directions, creating a unique and original movie. Nothing outlandish or bizarre happens - in fact the whole movie feels very realistic. That's what makes it unexpected - things don't turn out like they do in the movies.