Looking back with happiness
The plot sounds rather like the 1985 comedy "Back to the Future": a young man discovers a message on an old-fashioned pager and after calling the number - from a phone box no less - is transported back 20 years in time.
But Yanyong Kuruangkura, director of the newly released romantic comedy “2538 Alter Ma Jive”, says the two films are completely different.
“My story focuses on Kong as he tries to cope with living in an era that is so distant from the world into which he was born,” he insists.
The focus, he adds, is on how people connected with each other in 1995 – BE 2538 in the Buddhist calendar – which they did very successfully despite being without texting and social networking.
The idea for the movie came from a member of Mono Films who travelled to the UK with his team. While his eyes drank in scenery so different from his native land, those of his colleagues were glued to the screens of their mobile phones.
Yanyong, a former music video director, says Mono Films contacted him and asked him to bring the topic to life. He chose the year 1995 – he was a Matthayom student at the time and passionate about alternative music – and decided to make the story a romantic comedy.
“It was an exciting time,” he recalls. “Up to then Grammy and RS Promotion had ruled the music scene with teenybopper pop. Indie music had started to flourish with bands like Modern Dog. There was no K-pop and kids listened to bands like Nirvana, Blur and Oasis.
Yangyong picked 13 songs for the soundtrack and admits he would have like to include a lot more. He also shows how young lovers communicated with each other by sending messages via their pagers and by copying songs to a cassette tape and letting the music speak of their feelings.
“A cassette tape is something tangible. Today everything is cyberspace. You can’t touch it,” he laments.
The mid-90s also saw the transition from analog to digital. Sending messages through a pager was nothing like tapping in a text – senders needed to think carefully about what they wanted to say before calling the operator.
While there was spontaneity, it was more measured than in today’s society where whims and ideas can be posted immediately on social media, usually long before they are properly thought through.
“When we wanted to share something, we went to our parents or friends, but now we don’t have to because we have Facebook and Twitter,” he says.
The film also touches on the more momentous events of 1995 including the massive flooding in Bangkok and the death in July of the much-revered Princess Mother, though Yangyong doesn’t dwell on them but focuses on the romance between Kong’s parents.
“2538 Alter Ma Jive” stars Danarun Ramnarong as Kong, upcoming talent Pimchanok “Bai Fern” Luevisadpaibul as the girl he meets and Ashita Pramoj Na Ayutthaya and Vichuda Pindum as his parents.
