MOVIE REVIEW

Those were the days

'Final Score' is a documentary awash with a sentimental glow and joyful nostalgia

KONG RITHDEE

365 Wan Tam Tid Cheewit Dek Ent (Final Score), - A documentary on high school boys and the university entrance exam, In Thai with English subtitles, Directed by Soraya Nagasuwan : Documentary, in its conventional practice, is usually associated with grit and grime, with reality so pure, so naked it's almost dirty. That's because to tell a story in doc form is supposedly a filmmaker's choice to confront the truth that's too real, too raw to be fictionalised and tampered with, the truth that can only be captured once and cannot be reconstructed or manufactured.

But sure enough, such a grandstanding concept is nowadays applicable only to, say, a scene of a snake eating a rat on Animal Planet: Documentary has lately spawned the money-making hydra heads of melodramatic docu-dramas, confessional video diaries, sensational political mud-slingers, and an assortment of human-zoo reality shows, from Big Brother to Academy Fantasia - all in the name of "truth". It would be unwise to assume that any documentary is a prejudice-free enterprise, a sincere through-a-looking-glass attempt to depict life unadorned, uncleansed. Every image we see on screen, even the evening news, is filtered through the prism of the filmmaker's mind. It matters a lot what he chooses to see, to frame, to record, and most importantly, what he chooses to include in the final cut and what to discard into the wasteland of his Avid's trashbin.

Thus with the right mix, a doc is no longer just an educational material but a profitable movie-making effort; think, say, Fahrenheit 9/11, the controversial faux-doc Borat, or even the hit local TV show Khon Kon Khon. But while several docs opt to show things in the bad light for sensational effects, the new Thai documentary from studio GTH 365 Wan Tam Tid Cheewit Dek Ent - or Final Score in English - has done just the opposite: this digital doc has been cooked with such deft cinematic moves that it effectively turns its feel-bad topic into a feel-good movie. If Thai people love to see bad news on TV (whether we admit it or not), the moviemakers believe that we prefer to watch happy people having a good time on the big screen.

Made with commitment and sweat as the filmmakers shadowed four high-schoolers as they sharpened their knowledge for the cut-throat university admission exam, Final Score is also awash with the sentimental glow and joyful nostalgia aimed at inspiring goose-bumps. If, as statistics prove, 160,000 students are disappointed each year for failing to win the limited seats at state universities and only a lucky 40,000 are admitted, it's natural to expect this movie to be a story of grief as well as of joy. Not that I'd love to see a suicidal, depression-stricken chronicle of sad Thai boys and their academic miseries, but I believe Final Score, a well-meaning and fairly charming film, could push itself much further to give us a less polished reflection of the truth. In other words, what we see here on screen is interesting, but I'm curious if what we don't see - the footage that didn't make it into the final cut - would be even more so.

The fimmakers, led by director Soraya Nagasuwan, began following the four boys, all grade-12 students at Suankularb School, in May 2005, and shadowed them into their classrooms, their houses, their bedrooms, their exam sessions, their trips to a concert and the sea, until they took the notorious edition of the O-Net/A-Net exam in February 2006. We get to know a boy called Per, a skinny prankster and the film's central interest, plus three of his close friends, a smiley fatso, a goody two shoes, and a free-spirited exam-flunker - the ensemble is diverse and character-driven enough to be in a episode of Friends (minus the women). But as we watch them live every second of their final year as short-panted schoolboys, what we do not even get a glimpse of is their attitudes towards the entrance exam and the system imposed upon them - the system that is believed to judge their worth and their future. Do they really think their whole lives will be determined by a single test?

I believe that in producing a documentary, how you choose your subjects and how you translate their individual journeys to say something bigger, is a crucial step and the toughest decision to make. It's the choice that will affect the course of the movie. Then, another significant choice is in the editing room - what to include and what questions it will answer, what idea it will suggest. And considering the choice the filmmakers have made here, the only way to appreciate Final Score is to forget that despite its title, this is not exactly a film about the do-or-die university entrance exam. It is, rather, a storybook of memories narrated by the four lads who're crossing the threshold into a new status. It is something that high-schoolers will take to heart because of their shared experience, and something that young adults, especially if they're the lucky 40,000 who passed the exam years ago, will recall with a smile.

Bangkok Post
Friday February 02, 2007