There’s only one question you need to ask to kick off your monthly movie club’s discussion of Anocha Suwichakornpong’s new film, “By the Time It Gets Dark,” and it is this: “What even is it?” Pardon our cheek. There’s simply no better way to articulate how utterly and unabashedly odd Suwichakornpong’s movie is, other than to suggest its shared ancestry with films like Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors,” a film that is itself so impossible to describe that referencing it here is likely to only muddy waters that are already clouded enough. Take this neither as censure nor as praise; “By the Time It Gets Dark” is complex, oblique, and so immensely challenging that it’s pretty much impossible to declare it bewildering or brilliant after just one screening.
It’s just that kind of movie, which is to say that its impenetrability is refreshing. Even figuring out how in the hell to synopsize what Suwichakornpong has presented to her audience feels like a positively Herculean burden; “By the Time It Gets Dark” begins to fracture its narratives from its very opening moment, which fixates first on two people touring slowly through a seemingly disused house, to a warehouse movie set where cast and crew labor to recreate the events of the 1976 student massacre at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, to a pair of young people walking in a field together. If that doesn’t sound especially descriptive, be warned that it’s about as much of a preamble as you’re likely to get anywhere, and frankly that’s for the best. “By the Time It Gets Dark” rewards your patience, doubly so if you see it knowing as little about it as possible.
This is for two reasons. One, the film is more experiential than intellectual by nature; it’s a work that must be felt out before it can be thought out. Two, Suwichakornpong makes the most basic pieces of her plot, such as “By the Time It Gets Dark” can be said to have a plot, as clear as day; it’s everything surrounding those lightly traced details that’s tricky to parse. Once the film moves beyond its introductions, it settles into a groove wherein a director (Visra Vichit-Vadakan) and a writer-cum-former activist (Rassami Paoluengtong), travel to a bucolic retreat for the purposes of research and preparation: The former is making a movie about the latter, and as part of her process plans on interviewing her subject via video camera.
And that’s Suwichakornpong’s ostensible set-up, established through the most glacial of pacing. It is essential to understand that if “By the Time It Gets Dark” is anything, it is slow, not boring or plodding but deliberate, gradual; Suwichakornpong takes her time for good reason, lending a sort of pliancy to the film that serves it very well once she breaks away from her picture’s mien, roughly around its halfway mark. Without the quality of malleability, the gear shift “By the Time It Gets Dark” makes would throw off its delicate balance of craft and theme. If you can’t guess by the mention of Thammasat, this movie is political on a molecular level and a demonstration of how we are, all of us, connected by history. It’s also a movie that boasts a dream sequence (or is it?) involving time lapsed mushroom growth cycles and a scene from George Méliès’ “A Trip to the Moon.”
Make of that what you will. The truth is, you don’t have much of a choice. Where the first chunk of “By the Time It Gets Dark” is all artfully shot realism, everything we see unfold thereafter falls under the category of “surrealism” (though it remains artfully shot). It’s not that Suwichakornpong goes full-trippy on us; that “realism” stays mostly intact, speaking to what we see in her camera’s frame. But the film’s pieces and action fit together in ways that disguise their logic. They connect, but we can’t immediately sense why, or how, or what it is that drove Suwichakornpong to so drastically split the threads of the film at all, which raises a fundamental question about her approach to structure: Is she adding layers as “By the Time It Gets Dark” moves along, or is she stripping them away?
Most likely the second. If you’ve ever seen a Vermont born-and-bred snowboarder casually peel off their winter gear to reveal cutoff jean shorts and a tank top beneath, then you’re already well acquainted with the kind of unexpected illuminations “By the Time It Gets Dark” is peppered by. The film answers questions solely for the purpose of asking more. In the wrong state of mind it’s liable to leave you frustrated, so see it in the right state of mind, or see it more than once. Hell, see it more than once regardless state of mind you happen to see it in first. Suwichakornpong’s film is dense by nature. Whether that density suggests genius or not is to be seen in subsequent viewings, but there’s no doubt that the winding enigmas of“By the Time It Gets Dark” speak muted volumes. [B]
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