“A Useful Ghost” screens at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival.
“A Useful Ghost” is Thailand’s official submission for the 98th Oscar ceremony for Best International Film Feature. The film is the first feature length effort by Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, after his shorts “Red Aninsri” and “Tiptoeing on the Still Trembling Berlin Wall.” The director, who writes for Thailand television, is competing for the Gold Hugo award at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival. The film won the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at Cannes and was picked up for distribution (releasing in the U.S. on October 19th) at the Toronto International Film Festival.
PLOT
The synopsis reads, “Vengeful ghosts, possessed vacuum cleaners, and a supernatural sense of justice converge in this charmingly absurd fable of memory, loss, and grief.” Asked about the inspiration for the film, which was written during Covid and began shooting in 2023, the director told interviewer Pamos Ko-lzathanasis (Asian Movie Pulse) that the double meaning of the term “dust” in the Thai language ( dust= a person who “doesn’t matter, has no power”) intrigued him. Bangkok is known for its dust pollution. There is more coughing in this film than any movie I’ve seen in a long time, kicking off with the death of a worker named Tok in a Bangkok factory. When Tok dies, he is coughing up blood. He subsequently blames the factory and its owner, Suman (Apasiri Nitibbon) for his death, saying, “Your damn factory killed me!”
REVENGE
So, is the main plot a story of a ghost taking revenge on a factory he feels contributed to his death? Yes and no. Tok is but one of several ghosts in the film. The main ghost is a beautiful young woman named Nat (Davika Noorne) whose husband, March (Wisarut Hummarat) is grieving following her death. She returns as a ghost trapped in a vacuum cleaner. There is a part of the film where she becomes “solid” again, which was confusing, since that process is not well-explained, other than to link it to the loved one’s memories of the departed (i.e., the more vivid the memories, the more substantial the ghost appears, but the method for becoming human again? Not explained or addressed in the film.)
Nat’s job (for Paul, a government minister) is to administer electroshock therapy to people who are being visited by ghosts in their dreams, allowing those individuals to forget the spectres that are disturbing their sleep. [The idea of erasing memories made me think of Jim Carrey’s 2004 film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but “A Useful Ghost” is played more for laughs and with a much less serious tone.]
MAY 2010 UPRISING
Another series of vengeful ghosts referenced are those killed in a Thailand uprising/civil war that took place in May of 2010. The Thai military cracked down on the UDD (United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship). The protesters wanted Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve Parliament and hold elections. Eighty-five protesters were killed and 2,000 injured in the response to their protests by the armed military, who fired into the crowds with live bullets. There were still 51 additional protesters missing a month later. One sympathizer with the Red Shirt protesters, a former military man in Thailand, Khahiya Sawasdipol, was shot in the head by snipers on May 13, 2010, and died on May 17, 2010 while being interviewed by the New York Times when he was shot! It is not surprising that the script has this line: “Younger people are more obsessive about the past than older people.” The political implications of the character of Paul, plus the line about the May, 2010, political killings show that this near civil war is obviously still on the director/writer’s mind.
There is a political message here, (although the director indicated he had no problem with government censors over the film in an interview). The character of Paul represents a Trump-like figure whose influence is everywhere. In fact, it appears that Paul—who at first appears to be a good guy—was responsible for the death of a character named Krong (Wantop RungKumjad), who also becomes a vengeful ghost seeking revenge for his drowning at Paul’s direction. His feet are missing, which is something that the director discovered is frequently the case in representing ghosts on film.
GHOSTS
The director was asked about his cinematic depiction of ghosts. He admitted that, when he was first asked that question, he had to research how ghosts are depicted in cinema, going back to films like “Poltergeist” and “Beetlejuice.” He came up with the idea of making the main character (Nat) become increasingly translucent as she faded from the memory of her husband and others, and it worked. This was well done by cinematographer Pasit Tandechanurat. [On the matter of costuming, however, the shoulder pads that Nat wears went out in the eighties. Every time she made an entrance, I was struck by the huge shoulder pads, which did nothing for the timeliness of the film. Maybe they are still in fashion in Thailand, but the other female characters did not seem to be wearing huge shoulder pads.)
HUMOR
There is a Thai legend involving a female ghost that the director referenced as one inspiration for his female ghost, Nat. “My initial inspiration for the story is the legend of Mae Nok, which is a forbidden love story between a female ghost and her living husband.”He said he was also fascinated by the idea of ghosts in everyday objects, but admitted that a vacuum cleaner won out over a TV or washing machine, if only because of its ability to move about and, potentially, contain a ghost. It also led to some truly absurd humorous lines. March’s mother, when she comes upon him in the hospital hugging his vacuum cleaner, says, “I’m less worried about the fever than about the fact he made out with the vacuum cleaner.”
SEXUAL CONTENT
The film opens with Nat’s brother, Moss, telling us he is “an academic ladyboy.” While it is obvious that Moss means that he is gay, it was not a term I ever heard in the U.S. The sexual tryst between Moss and Krong, is another recent homosexual love story, a la “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “On Swift Horses.”
DREAMS
There is much discussion of dreams, which Boonbunchachoke described as being “our most personal intimate space.” He related a plot where there is a Ministry of Dreams and one’s dreams are examined for signs of treason. Ghosts and dreams are not unfamiliar territory for me. I wrote 6 books about ghosts set along Route 66. (“Ghostly Tales of Route 66.”)
SCRIPT
Boonbunchachoke likes actors to stick to the script in his films, but leaves enough flexibility for some improvisation. Humor is quite prevalent throughout, and the director said, “Humor works best when you don’t expect it.”
GHOSTS IN PROTEST
The film says of ghosts, “Their return is an act of protest…Ghosts are those that don’t give in to death, but have no power to change things.” We also hear one character saying, “Someone must remember. No one will remember me. No one will remember what I and the others fought for.”
CONCLUSION
Writer/Director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke at the 61st Chicago International Film Festival.
When I attended a press showing of ‘’A Useful Ghost,” I remembered that Cannes seeks “a great big pole-vault over the barrier of normalcy by someone who feels that the possibilities of cinema have not been exhausted by conventional realist drama.” (Peter Bradshaw’s review of the Cannes film “Holy Motors” in “The Guardian,” 2012.)
“A Useful Ghost” falls into that category. I had the same reaction to “A Useful Ghost” as to “Holy Motors” thirteen years ago. As the author of at least 6 books on ghosts, I felt some review expertise for this one. “’A Useful Ghost’ does not try to frighten or scare the audience. Instead, it provokes them to think about the relationships between humans and ghosts in our society,” said its writer/director, Boonbunchachoke.
“A Useful Ghost” won the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at Cannes. Its writer/director will be present with the film in Chicago when it screens on 10/19 (8 p.m.) at the Gene Siskel Film Center and on 10/21 at the NewCity AMC at 2 p.m.
