Grave all your kisses from me

Thai cinema has, to date, rarely enjoyed the international stage as much its neighbours but a “new wave”, featuring such directors as Nonzee Nimibutr, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul as well as action hero Tony Jaa may change all that.

In recent years, Thai cinema has slowly crept into our collective consciousness. The Bollywoodised Tears Of A Black Tiger became a worldwide arthouse hit in 2001. Weerasethakul’s 2002 feature Blissfully Yours won the Un Certain Regard Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. A new Bangkok based avant garde featuring the Hong Kong born Pang brothers and experimental filmmakers such as Aditya Assarat and Pimpaka Tohveera promises to keep things interesting.
Mark Duffield, a British cinematographer turned director who has worked in Thailand for over a decade is cautiously optimistic. “At the moment the Thai film industry is blossoming for Thai audiences but maybe not international”, he tells me. “This is what I wanted to achieve with The Ghost Of Mae Nak.”
Mae Nak, a romantic ghost story that has been filmed at least 20 times in its native country seems like an unlikely project for a foreigner to take on. Based on a ‘true’ haunting, it is a century year old tale involving a young soldier who returns from a war to his wife Nak and their newborn child. When he is alone, the villagers try to warn him that he is living with a ghost and that his wife died during childbirth. He refuses to believe them and she takes revenge on those villagers who attempted to interfere in her affairs. The survivors of her rampage exhume her corpse, revealing a decaying body and dead infant. An exorcist is called to cut a piece of bone from her skull thus sealing her angered spirit inside.
“During my first time in Thailand I heard of a shrine that is devoted to a famous Thai ghost called Mae (Mother) Nak,” explains Mark. “I visited the shrine and was surprised to see hundreds of Thai people pray and give offerings to Mae Nak and ask her for a blessing or guidance. I then began to research the Mae Nak story listening to the various versions from the Thai people I knew. Each story varied but at its heart was the tragic love story and the theme of love transcending death. I also discovered that there had been many films about Mae Nak over the last 50 years. Most were hysterical comedies with poor production value and OTT acting. I watched the definitive Mae Nak period film called Nang Nak directed by Nonzi Nimiburt. This film concluded with the ‘evil’ spirit of Mae Nak being held captive in a piece of bone cut from her forehead by an Exorcist Monk, and the bone was lost in time. It was here that I was inspired to write my script and continue the Mae Nak story.”
Like recent Thai releases like The Shutter and The Eye, Ghost Of Mai Nak suggests the emergence of a T-horror to rival the more established J and K horrors.
“I watched many Thai horror and ghost movies which always tend to degenerate into hysterical comedies,” says Mark. “So I was keen to make a serious ghost story that also showed a young modern Bangkok.”
Mission accomplished. Now if only I could learn to pronounce the actor’s names.