Mundane History (2009)

Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Mundane History explores the slow evolution of feeling between Ake (Phakpoom Surapongsanuruk), a wealthy and jaded young man left handicapped by a car accident, and Pun (Arkaney Cherkam), his new nurse. Set in a once-grand bourgeois manor in Bangkok, the household becomes a synecdoche of the Thai nation, as the unfeeling patriarch, Ake’s authoritarian father, shows little warmth toward him.

As a complex psychological drama develops, the film’s non-linear structure flows through six macro-sequences that slide back and forth in time. This atmospheric, ghostly space is interspersed with mystical asides to astronomy and melancholy post-rock music by Furniture and The Photo Sticker Machine. The film marks Suwichakornpong’s maiden voyage into commenting on contemporary Thailand, finding lyrical cinematic freedom through existential questions of rebirth and the cycle of time itself.