Looking Up High, Wondering . . .

/1/

Chart Korbjitti is a highly honored writer in Thai literature. He proves it by brilliantly grabbing two SEA (South East Asia) Write Awards: in 1982 with his breathtaking novel The Judgement and in 1994 with a slow-moving novel Time. Yet, he is still away from being renowned among literary readers in South East Asian countries including Indonesia and Malaysia. As a matter of fact, he is among the most unique writers in the world and all of his works are worth re-reading.

      With ever-fresh and nonstandard narrative styles in all of his novels, Chart Korbjitti is among literary anchors in South East Asia that are skillful in narrative styles, such as Danarto and Iwan Simatupang from Indonesia. Each of his novel is composed with the application of unique narrative style that corresponds to the theme it takes. In his first SEA Write winning novel, The Judgement, he explored guilt and finally came up with a guilt-ridden narrative style. In this essay, however, I will focus on the novel Time, in which he tries to combine the standard form of novel with play and movie script. Following are the synopsis of the novel, a brief record of the uniquely shaped narrative style and, at the end, an interpretation of the theme this novel takes.  

/2/

Time tells about a protagonist, a senior movie director in Thailand, watching a play about old people living in a nursing home played by young people of twenties. In the beginning, the protagonist wonders how those young people of twenties have become so interested in old people’s life that they present a play about the inner feeling of elderly people, while he himself, already sixty three years of age, wants to make movies about young people. In his amazement, he begins to doubt the quality of the play he is watching. However, before deciding to come to the theater, he was interested in watching the play because a review on the paper awarded it as “the most boring play of the year.” So interested as he was, he arranged his time so seriously that he can watch the drama after finishing shooting his newest movie.

      The drama visualizes a daily activities that can happen at any day in a nursing home inhabited by Granny Nuan, Granny Bunrunean, Granny Jan, Granny Sorn, Granny Erp, Granny Thapthim, Granny Yoo, and some other granny who can no longer wake up, and a mentally ill old man occupying a special cell of the same room. The play opens while the clock shows 04.45 early in the morning. The clock, with a modified clicking speed, will show the time during the show and this seems to give the novel its title, Time. The day opens with the wake of the house residents and goes on with morning bath. A small quarrel follows when one of the residents reports to have lost some of her money. A food vendor visits to sell his goods. Some time later, a monk visits to bless all the residents in the house. Another boy selling food and drinks comes afterwards. Later in that morning, a big family visits the house in order to celebrate their grandmother’s birthday; another shocking fact is revealed, that this grandmother was actually Granny Bunrunean’s housemaid in the past. Then, approaching the afternoon, a young man with mental disorder, Granny Thapthim’s son, visits. Afternoon bath follows. And, prior to the closure of this play, people find that Granny Yoo, a resident in the house who cannot communicate well, is dead and her body is taken care of by the villagers and brought to the cemetery.

      During the play, our protagonist gives lengthy comments about the play before him. Most of his comments show how he is not satisfied with the performance he is presented with. At the beginning, he feels upset because he smells the stench of urine when the play opens. Then, he wants to protest because he has to wait for a long time before the first dialogue is heard. He has to wait for five full minutes—and five minutes is not a short time for the audience to spend watching an empty stage.  He considers it a vain act and time wasting, and he reckons it will be better if story is produced as a movie. In his opinion, in movies, audience does not have to wait for five full minutes because the clock can be accelerated and the technique of picture taking will prevent boredom on the part of the audience. Later on, we will know that most of his dissatisfaction with the play is because he considers the minor flaws in the play can be easily handled when the same theme produced as a movie. However, there are times when, without any clear reasoning, he directly translates the drama into a movie of his style. During this time, readers will read a movie script that is actually the movie version the drama as the protagonist imagines it to be.

      There are times when the protagonist recalls moments in his life because some actions or dialogues in the drama remind him of monumental incidents in his life. When a food vendor said “he looks well today, but don’t talk about it, because it can turn out bad,” he remembers of the premonition he got when his daughter died several years before. When he sees the powerless residents spoon-fed, he remembers his fear of how his life will turn out when he’s already old while his wife and daughter are already dead. It continues with how he used to escape the world by drowning himself in alcohol when his wife died. These small pieces of memory introduce us to the protagonist as a person with past and personality. The facts were separate but comprehensive enough for us to know the protagonist’ life—and, this even shows how this book is really a novel although a third of it is written in the form of movie script and another third written in the form of a play.  

/3/

In deed, the most prominent part of this novel is its unique narrative style. At the first sight, we can see that it book contains not only paragraphs like novels in generals, but we can also find parts that correctly resemble a play compete with instructions around the expressions and actions by which actors are expected to read the dialogue. A bit deeper, we will find that there are parts that look like a play but accompanied with jargons of instructions commonly found in a movie script. We can see now, that this time Chart is employing a narrative style that combines novel, drama, and movie.

      On parts with novel flavor, we will find descriptive sentences. Generally, this kind of part consists of the protagonist’s appreciation of the play he is watching. He gives his verbal criticism of the play in this part. It is also here that he relates significant moments in his life, usually after seeing some parts in the play that remind him of those moments. As a result, here, in the novel-like part of the novel, is the part where we can gain information about the life of the protagonist himself. In this part, the novel performs its task as a normal novel. Sometimes, they play that our protagonist is watching is also presented in this part. So, it feels like we read a story about the life in the nursing house with third person point of view. Usually, these parts are followed by the protagonist’s interpretation on the behavior or action of the characters in the play he is watching.

      Meanwhile, on other occasions, we will read a real play. This is the time when the protagonist reports the play he is watching without giving any comments. In this part, the protagonist lets the play talk by itself to the audience, while the protagonist is nowhere to be found until a special part of the drama reminds him of something that happened in his life in the past—usually followed with the protagonist’s narration in the form of normal novel.

      Also unique is the part where we seem to read a movie script. This part, generally, is the product of our protagonist’s interpretation of the play in the form that he desires. We can conclude that this interpretation mainly comes from his dissatisfaction with the play. There are times when he considers those parts of the play should not have been presented in the form of a play and, thus, he assumes that it is better if it is presented as a movie. In some parts, the stage is occupied by only one person that ponders for quite a long time. At this time, he considers wasting so long a time only to see a small woman against a wide stage can be avoided if the story were produced as a movie. In movies, a pondering woman can be fascinating because the picture can be shot from various angles and distances, not to mention the illustrative music.  

/4/

In general, the novel takes as its theme how the inner feeling of the elderly people when they observe the world with all of its chaotic quality and how the elder generation views the younger one—a situation which often creates generation gap. The novel shows how elderly people are overwhelmed by their own problems with the younger generation surrounding their life, either the old generation in the drama or outside the drama, that is to say, the protagonist himself. In this novel, the relationship between the elder and younger generation is very clear and complex at the same time because it has various layers. However, we will get more pieces of wisdom from people with lots of journey in life than from those of the younger generation—many of whom could easily make us grim.

      The first generation gap is the distance of a protagonist in the novel with the youngsters who plays “the most boring play of the year”. This distance is the difference of taste between the protagonist and the youngsters. The protagonist is the kind of director who makes a movie with conventional aesthetics where everything that appears in a movie—and therefore in play—should pass the filtering process of beauty and usefulness; while the youngsters playing the drama tended to show their interest in the sensational matters and do not view usefulness as the only measure. If one aspect of the play, for example the stench of urine hovering around the hall during the play, gives only small benefit to the audience, but even drives them bored, it will be better then if this aspect is not presented—although it will be a breakthrough, a sensation. On other occasions, there are characters without any dialogue. It might be an innovation in a play. However, for the protagonist who considers those innovations as something that strengthen the boredom, they should be omitted by the director. As a solution, he said that it would not be any problem if it were a movie, because to present quietness, the director can use movie features, such as camera play, in order to make the scene more interesting: pictures could be shot as a “close up”, “medium range” “fade in”, “fade out”, and so forth.

      Having discussed the first layer, let us now talk about the second layer of the generation gap in this novel, that is, the gap between the young and old generations depicted in the drama.

      As a matter of fact, the young generation of whom the old one does not favor is not narrated at all. Discussions concerning the distinction between the young and old generations, however, are evidently spread from the very beginning until the very end of this book.

       The young generation who really has an existence—and a dialog, for sure—in the drama is the one who can be described as very close, no gap,  to the elderly. The young person, of course, is the one who has great concerns towards the elderly, who is willing to spend their youth to work in the senior citizens home. The generation gap alluded here is the gap between the elderly and the youths who make their life miserable. Simply speaking, we can say that this drama also suggests the young generation who are ungrateful to the elderly who have given birth, raised, and provided them with education. Granny Thapthim admits that she is now washed ashore in the nursing home, for he was previously a “takraw” ball moving about from one’s foot to another's never touching the ground—and the nursing home is like a green grass where the “takraw” ball finally recesses. At that time, nevertheless, he had no burden in going into the senior citizens home, since his son was sent to an asylum—In spite of the fact that he eventually fled. Another resident was dropped at the gate of the nursing home by a taxi driver paid by their children—not knowing exactly the reason of the one who gave him order.

      Lastly, we can also feel how the protagonist himself experience problems with the younger filmmakers. As I said earlier, it is pertinent to the protagonist’ film taste that can be said as “ordinary” and emphasizing beauty and usefulness as a certainty, while the young generation prefers something extraordinary, without considering the significance of the things they call extraordinary. One of the examples is how he responds cool-headedly his fellow’s tale, a young director that in one of his shootings decided to take a picture of the legs of a couple of lovers walking in their first date. At another occasion, he states his lack of sympathy towards the younger movie crews who made boring movies with the hope “to see the viewers’ expression.”

      That is the inner feeling of the old generation depicted in Time, and their various sorts.

      Last but not least, Chart Korbjitti has shown his great commitment to the kind of literature that emphasizes the balance between theme and form. If only international public sees this novel, many people will unanimously put Chart Korbjitti side by side with James Joyce and John Banville.