Ten Years on a Sinking Ship
by Joaquin Singson
There was nothing but praise from many a critic for a tiny project called Ten Years, coming out of Hong Kong in 2015—speculative in theme and dystopian in nature, Ten Years was a collection of short films on the future of Hong Kong set in the year 2025, expressing its filmmakers’ anxieties toward the eventual dissolution of their status as a special administrative region of China. Soon enough, filmmakers from other countries followed suit, with Japanese, Taiwanese, and Thai filmmakers making their own Ten Years projects that came out in 2018, with Ten Years Thailand perhaps having the highest profile among them with its premiere at Cannes that year.
Its reception among international audiences has been mixed, however. The first short, called Sunset, by Aditya Assarat, was well liked; in the film, the staff of an art gallery deal with a group of soldiers who have come to take down some photographs, while peripheral to this, one soldier contemplates asking one of the staff out on a date. Just as appreciated was Wisit Sasanatieng’s Catopia, in which one of the last humans left in a world taken over by cats intervenes in a public stoning, then begins to fear for his life. Third in this series was Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s Planetarium, showing a day in the life of a dictator’s wife, where, she, Imeldific in her pink girl scout uniform, and her retinue of child soldiers, prepares for a morning announcement while she turns the country on and off with her cellphone.
Some praised it for its striking visuals and surreal worldbuilding, but others thought it was nothing more than pretentious video art. Song of the City, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, was too slow, a little too focused on building up an atmosphere without creating any narrative. But perhaps, instead of dismissing it, one should ask why Apichatpong chose to make it like that in the first place.
Song of the City follows several people in a park in Khon Kaen, Apichatpong’s hometown. Two old friends talk about their plans for the summer, while somewhere else in the park, a man tries to sell a sleep aid device to a group of friends, while a pair of soldiers amble about in another part. In the distance, the sound of a practicing marching band cuts through the rumble of the city’s traffic, and the bright orange of a backhoe pops out among the trees from time to time.
And central to everything going on is a statue at the park’s center. Apichatpong frames this statue with his camera trained at an angle upwards; the man in military dress it represents looks powerful and solid. This is a statue of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, leader of a US-backed military coup in 1957, the fifth coup of eleven successful ones in Thailand. Sarit’s government was noted for its authoritarianism and anti-communism as a result of their closeness with the US—parliament was closed, political parties were banned, and media was censored. Roughly 1,000 people were detained and imprisoned on the basis of their opposition to Sarit’s rule, and it was policies like these that led to the eventual escalation of violence toward suspected communists in Thailand throughout the 20th century.
And perhaps this is a crucial detail that foreign audiences miss out on—this short is more than just the creation of an atmosphere, more than just slow cinema for slowness’ sake. It’s a premonition, and all at once, a lament.
In an interview with the Isaan Record in 2015, Apichatpong set out his thoughts on the future of Thailand: “It is like being on a sinking ship, but it is a quite comfortable ship. There is music, there is good food, but it is sinking, and we don’t realize it.” And just as much, the people in Song of the City are this ship’s passengers—after another coup, another government torn down and replaced by another, what’s there to do? Plan for the summer. Walk around with a friend. Put on your sleeping aid. Dream it all away.
And it’s here from here I find Song of the City draws its strength—it is ultimately a criticism of the impulse to retreat into comfort during times of conflict, the way privilege blinds so easily the unaffected—which is perhaps why it’s such a boring film in the first place: This is life right now for many of us, and for many of us too, this will still be life in ten years.
But for how much longer will this life be for all of us?
In the Philippines, where I’m from, any number between 12,000 to 20,000 have been killed since 2016, when Rodrigo Duterte came to the presidency and began his war on drugs. The poor are disproportionately targeted, as many of these killings happen in the shantytowns and slum districts of Metro Manila, where police find it easier to knock a door down and run off into the night, where they can find bodies to fill up their quotas and expect no resistance. Because in precarious times, the poor are always the first affected, and the question remains—for how much longer?
And as it is, reports have come in from fishing villages in the north—fishermen have been abandoning their homes and moving closer inland—storms and floods have become worse, and the tide has entered their own living rooms, “leaving nothing but electricity posts.” A warning released by the UN in 2018 tells a similar story—that a failure on humanity’s part to keep global warming from rising past 1.5° C by the year 2030, eleven years from now, would only mean its effects intensifying all over the world. The question remains.
But it is still only 2019, and there may be a note of optimism present in Song of the City still—by leaving it this ambiguous, Apichatpong perhaps opens up the possibility of a future where everyone can afford the luxury to talk about summer, to amble about and indulge in conversation, to nap without worry. Perhaps Song of the City is a call to arms, then: that we have ten years to work and organize, to get together, and create that kind of future. Because the question will remain, and it’s definitely for the best that we don’t find its answer.
Joaquin Singson is a 22-year-old essayist and art writer from Quezon City, Philippines.