Happy Old Year (2019), directed by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit
Review of Happy Old Year / ฮาวทูทิ้ง..ทิ้งอย่างไรไม่ให้เหลือเธอ (2019), directed by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit
As much as I have heard about Thai dramas, I’ve never actually watched a Thai show or movie until now. And watching this movie was completely by accident, to be honest. I was having particularly bad bouts of my illness the weekend I watched this, and I accidentally clicked on it while going through my Netflix as I desperately searched for something to watch. I checked the language, saw it was Thai, and then thought to myself that this could be interesting, so I kept watching.
And interesting it was! This was Thailand’s entry for the Academy Awards the year it came out and I can see why. Since I hadn’t read up on the plot before watching it, I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of tangible romance and by the themes that it touched upon. The lead actress, model and actor Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying (wow that’s a mouthful with the little Thai that I know), plays this character that truly comes alive on the screen, and the dynamics between her and her family/friends are fascinating to watch.
Enough rambling! On with the review :)
Content
Happy Old Year is kind of a quiet film, one that honestly would come across as underrated. Our main character is Jean, who has moved back to Thailand after living in Sweden for three years. She moves back into the home with her brother and elderly mother, but finds that is it essentially a hoarder’s nest. None of her family is willing to depart with their beloved objects, so Jean becomes obsessed with minimalism and the concept of throwing things out. We even get a nice shot of Marie Kondo’s show in there somewhere. But, then, as she returns objects to people she hasn’t met in years, she, too, gets stuck when she runs into the possessions of an ex-boyfriend, whom she broke up with herself.
This film shows the other side of minimalism, about where we do have sentimental ties to the objects that we surrounded ourselves with. This is a sad movie; as Jean comes across her dead father’s possessions, or his name on her school report card, she can’t bring herself to look at them too long lest succumb to the emotion that comes with these discoveries. It’s such a realistic emotion that this movie is capturing because most people can relate to this process of decluttering and the memories trapped in what we surround ourselves with.
The cinematic elements of this film are so stellar! I found myself impressed with the natural coloring and symmetrical elements that the shots were blocked out to be. I love symmetry and clean lines, and since this film relied so heavily on the concept of minimalism in its plot, this choice in filming made a lot of sense when juxtaposed to the actual story. The main character’s wardrobe also lends itself to this thought process, since she wears clean cuts that are in neutral tones, mostly in black and white. She also dresses a bit non-gender conforming, seen in trousers and something akin to khakis, which I thought was a touch on this as well.
Overall Thoughts
What we can learn while watching is that we can’t just throw memories away, like our main character tried to. She smothers her past and tries to get rid of everything she owns heartlessly, but becomes trapped in the memories that she’s now reliving as she goes through the decluttering process. Eventually you have to confront your past and the actions that you took and regret, and that’s what this film is about at the end of the day. I wholeheartedly recommend it, I related to the film despite it being a movie from Thailand, and the messages that it tried to convey. There’s something to learn from international films, and this definitely is an underrated one.
