Earlier this month just as the year started due to an error in my USB many raw footages from my films and old photos of my pre transition self got corrupted and is now lost forever yet I also felt it was appropriate, even therapeutic. I’m more somebody who subscribes to the notion of remembering then photographing, I never liked those photos I took of myself back then, they felt like an attempt at figuring myself out, many of them clearly showing my inner queerness just peaking through the closet but still repressed by the self image I was taught to embody, the images were also a reminder to myself that I actually existed, here’s the proof. It’s gone yet I still exist now more then ever. Anyways, the film would have maybe missed me from back then judging by its melancholic misty eyed relationship to memories but I don’t and maybe the fault is on my part, maybe it’s just not the right film for me at this time where am more interested to be in the present then look back on my past but either way, atleast for 60 minutes I can’t deny, they were effectively there.
36 deals with contemporary ways we remember, that is to say we perceive. It’s strange that I tend to remember inconsequential things more then I do the big things, those feel more overwhelming that they become foggy but it’s the ones where I walk the streets, my hair gently blowing in the wind, checking myself in the mirror in the restroom and seeing how pretty her smile is. That’s what stands out to me more maybe because they felt so careless and free, 36 I argue also holds this mentality especially in the first 20 minutes before the title drops which I feel is the film at its best, it’s narrative not only defined by moments normal traditional films would mostly cut out or ignore but it’s got such a sentimental and nostalgic lens for the mundanity of life that admittedly I find it frustrating because the glimpse we get into economic and social restlessness here actually really works, especially how subtle and naturalistic the film paints it, there’s no preaching or pushing messages like other Thai films of this kind about young adults, it’s just a part of the existence.
But as the plot starts to reveal itself, the harshness and toughness of modern life seems lost within the soft carefree attitude of the static photographic aesthetic. The tension so aware of how small that main issue driving the plot is, that’s part of the irony here that I struggled to immerse myself further, it’s interesting ideally but as a experience along with the conceptual structure, it all becomes more reassuring then challenging yet it’s work that consistently evokes a need to contemplate which is what I most like about this even if it doesn’t quite ask the real interesting questions or concerns to a degree I find distracting and lukewarm. It just doesn’t feel like it evolves too much to make the most of its intriguing premise and profound ideas, the execution holds it back in my opinion even if it is admittedly attractive. 36 may not always be cohesive or complex about what it’s trying to be yet as this technological poem to memory, documenting it and losing it as much as we do of ourselves, it certainly swoons with how relatable the film remains, romantic even but more as a hook up or crush then a significant relationship you can devote your heart to. I still enjoy this mostly as pillow talk, half asleep, half awake, better to get up and talk with our brain right side up then almost sinking into bed but hey, I would rather be in bed today with you.
P.S. if you do constantly keep ruminating, obsessing, looking and searching your past, yearning it for it maybe even more then living, then you will probably love this film and you should watch it.
