Today's set of reviews are films that are, in their own ways, ghost stories.
The first film, Jin Ong's Abang Adik, features ghosts of the metaphorical kind: people who live out their lives invisibly, unable to be seen by society at large. Abang (Kang Ren Wu) and Adik (Jack Tan) are undocumented orphans living in Pasar Pudu, Kuala Lumpur. The place is known for its large wet market, but it is also where communities of the urban poor, marginalized peoples and immigrants of all sorts live. While the deaf Abang tries to get by working various jobs in the wet market, Adik frequently skirts the law, faking identification cards and selling his body to make ends meet. The two brothers are helped by social worker Jie En (Serene Lim), though they have different opinions on the matter: while Abang wants to continue the application process in order to be able to get more jobs, Adik has lost all faith in the system and wants nothing to do with it.
The film takes us through the everyday struggles of the two brothers as they try to live in a community that is regularly raided by the authorities - a home that is more an oppressive open air prison than it is a home. Not unlike the urban landscapes here in the Philippines, the inhabitants of this place, all coming from different parts of Asia, live together through hardship in a sort of solidarity, but also in a shared existence that has its own hierarchy.
Yet even though it looks bleak, there are certain glimpses of humanity: Jie En sacrifices her family in order to care for people who may or may not want to be helped. Abang befriends a refugee from Myanmar but knows their time together is limited - in one sequence, the doomed couple look at a mirror, perhaps catching sight of a life that will never be. Abang and Adik's benefactor, Money (Tan Kim Wang) supports the two brothers out of a sort of parental bond. The bond between the two brothers is strong, each gesture pregnant with meaning, communicating a long, shared history. I'll never look at breaking eggs the same way again.
The second half of the film is marked by a sudden turn that upends all of these characters' relationships, culminating in a sequence with Abang where no words are literally "heard", that (figuratively) ends up being the loudest scene in the entire film. When people end up being all but unable to be heard or seen by the land of their birth, the path to becoming a ghost is a tragic inevitability.
For this next film, I'm reminded of a quote from, of all things, The Haunting of Hill House:
"Ghosts are guilt, ghosts are secrets, ghosts are regrets and failings. But most times a ghost is a wish."
Adam (Andrew Scott) is a writer living alone in London. One day, he comes across his father (Jamie Bell) buying cigarettes in a store. But there's a problem: his parents have been gone for years, lost in a tragic accident. And yet here are his parents, apparently alive and as old as they were the year they were lost. At the same time, he meets his neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), and starts a relationship with him.
As Adam navigates this new relationship, he can't help but tell his parents all about him and what has happened in all these intervening years. Though their mindset is still stuck in a time where gay men like Adam are discriminated against, they tentatively accept his identity with the love only a parent can give. And as Adam is drawn deeper back into the life he could have lived, he withdraws from everything else.
A lonely, 'ghostly' existence permeates the frames of Andrew Haigh's All of Us Are Strangers, its protagonists solitary stars in the sky, their existences bounded by light years, space and time. DP Jamie Ramsay frames Adam with a shallow depth of field, blurring everything (and everyone) around him. Even in the apartment building where he lives, it's like no one's around besides Adam: "there aren't even security guards around," Harry quips. He is too caught up with his own past regrets that he barely sees the beauty in things anymore, in what's in front of him.
And this is the central tragedy of the film: in shutting himself off from the rest of the world, in denying who he is, so much is lost to what ifs, to failed timelines. Sometimes the things that haunt us are what turn us into ghosts.
In this last film, 'ghosts' take on many forms: that of enduring, unresolved regret, of spirits tethered eternally to place and memory.
Ami (Mihaya Shirata) has been haunted by apparitions. Her Japanese mother (Mariko Tsutsui) left Singapore to help in the relief efforts after the 3/11 Tsunami, but never returned. Ami's father (Peter Yu) refuses to elaborate, saying that Ami's mother killed herself out of despair. Ami then discovers a set of tape recordings that say her mother might be alive, and she sets out to Japan to find her.
Quiet, contemplative and haunting, Last Shadow at First Light deals with things that linger, long after what caused them has faded away. Regret fuels this lingering: Ami's mother has regrets over being unable to save her own parents from the tsunami; Ami's uncle Isamu (Masatoshi Nagase) yearns for his dead wife whose body was never found and experiences survivor's guilt.
Isamu and Ami travel through the landscapes of Northern Japan, where at least at first, many traces of the tsunami's devastation no longer exist. While Isamu is at first reluctant to join his niece in her journey, he relents and faces his own regrets perhaps for the first time since his loss. Eventually they come across their family's old hometown, with abandoned buildings strewn all over, and with a seawall blocking sight of the waters. Even though they can hear the waves, they cannot see them - a metaphorical specter of that tragedy, if you will.
The two eventually reach their respective destinations. The climactic scene - magical, elusive, ambiguous - sees both confronting their respective 'ghosts' head on, not necessarily to say goodbye, but to allay the waves of their regret. Such is grieving: those waves will never leave - we only live to swim with the current as time goes by.
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