Tears of the Black Tiger / ฟ้าทะลายโจร / Fa Thalai Chon (Thailand, 2000)

Now here's a masterpiece of a film that you have probably never heard of but that you truly should see: Tears of the Black Tiger, the directorial debut of the Thai director Wisit Sasanatieng, who also wrote the screenplay. The year prior to this movie, in 1999, Sasanatieng also supplied the script to director Nonzee Nimibutr's pleasant, touching, exotic — at least for us Westerners — and artistically sincere (but far from scary) ghost movie Nang Nak, a good film well worth watching. But while that film's tale does reveal the scriptwriter as having a solid grasp of story and narrative, it is in no way indicative that its screenwriter might be a nascent auteur director. 

That Sasanatieng is a man of talent and artistic vision, however, is put on full, overly saturated Technicolor display in Tears of the Black Tiger, a movie that no one seems to know about, and that has thoroughly and pleasurably gobsmacked everyone we, here at a wasted life, have forced to watch it. (Eight and counting within the last three months.) The movie reveals a unique and creative and highly enjoyable vision in every frame, which makes it all the more incomprehensible that Tears of the Black Tiger remains so unknown. But then, it has suffered some setbacks since it first hit the silver screens of Thailand... 

Trailer to

Tears of the Black Tiger:

Released in Thailand in September 2000, Tears of the Black Tiger, both an homage to and parody of the Thai films of the '50s and '60s, flopped like a dead fish at the box office. But it also garnered a lot of good press and won more than a few national awards, from costume design and artistic design and film score to special effects and best supporting actor (Sombat Metanee [26 Jun 1937 – 18 Aug 2022]). The movie began touring international festivals, where it always proved to be an audience favorite and won even more nominations and awards, and was then selected — the first Thai film ever — for the Un Certain Regard competition at Cannes 2001, where it was nominated but failed to win. 

But it was at Cannes that tragedy fell: the Weinsteins — as in the predator Harvey and his see-no-evil brother Bob — bought the distribution rights to the movie. First, they re-cut the movie (against the director's wishes) for a happy ending, then they screened it at Sundance in 2002 — and, finally, they simply locked it up in the basement and threw away the key. And so the movie languished, unseen and slowly forgotten, until 2007, when Magnolia bought the rights and released the director's original version on a now long-out-of-print DVD. Too little too late, the upshot being that even today, a truly fabulous movie truly lacks the international respect and renown it deserves and thus still lingers in unjustifiable obscurity. 

A tragic western and love story, Tears of the Black Tiger is an acid-drenched crossbreed between a doomed, Douglas Sirk-style melodramatic love story and a tacky, almost silent film-style western set amidst colorfully over-saturated landscapes and interiors and painted backgrounds. A well-grounded familiarity of international film is also evident, with the movie often calling to mind films as diverse as Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000 / trailer), Sam Rami's The Quick and the Dead (1995 / trailer), and Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968 / trailer), amongst other films, and not to mention Wes Anderson's stylistic sensibilities, Quentin Tarantino's penchant for ridiculous violence, the melodrama of Sirk (as previously inferred), and a sense for camp that rivals that of John Waters. 

Yes, blood does occasionally spray in Tears of the Black Tiger, but just as often unrequited love languishes painfully, all within a stylized and multi-hued world of yesterday. The movie may be cheesy and over-the-top and Mannerist to the point of total artificiality, but it also a truly beautiful feast for the eyes that never stops astounding and surprising. And in between, sudden explosions of outlandish and bloody violence burst across the screen, hilariously and terribly and tragically, not to mention somewhat trashily. (One such scene is so quick that the viewer is given a slow-motion replay.) 

At the core of this absurd and delirious and highly imaginative amalgamation of genres is the love between Dum (Chartchai Ngamsan of Koht phetchakhat [2005 / trailer] and Nonzee Nimibutr's 2499 antapan krong muang / Dang Bireley's and the Young Gangsters [1997 / trailer]), a lowly rural worker turned outlaw (the Black Tiger), and Rumpoey (Stella Malucchi of Angulimala [2003 / trailer]), the privileged daughter of an upper-crust family. Set mostly in what appears to be the '50s, the movie jumps back and forth in time to reveal their past and present, and how not just social class but fate itself forever intervenes, preventing these star-crossed lovers from becoming the couple they so obviously should be. Instead, she is forced into an engagement with a military man she cannot stand, Kumjorn (Arawat Ruangvuth of Meteor [2004 / trailer] and Deep in the Jungle [2008 / full film]), and Dum evolves into the renowned Black Tiger, a silent sharpshooter high in the ranks of a violent gang of criminals led by the feared bandit Fai (the legendary Sombat Metanee, who doesn't sing in the film). A criminal gang that Kumjorn is determined to destroy. 

Sombat Metanee sings

(sometime in the 1960s):

Tears of the Black Tiger is a probably the best postmodern, high-camp, vibrantly colored Thai love-story western ever made, and truly deserves to be rediscovered and enjoyed. Watch it now — and spread the word that it exists! Here at a wasted life, in any event, it is without doubt the best film we've watched (multiple times) this year.