The Forest

I wasn't quite sure what genre THE FOREST was for the first fifty minutes. It seemed to be a fable for children, with morals on the evil of bullying, as well as befriending ghosts and goblins in the forest. A little clumsy with the set-up, but that was all soon forgiven when the second half of this movie ventured into a dark mysterious path with some violence and other adult themes. So it eventually had my attention, and I was glad that my finger didn't press the stop button earlier.

The two main protagonists, the teacher and the silent student, were well crafted characters that held you in there until the story took an interesting turn for that second half. More importantly was the performances by the actors that made these characters shine. The child actress, Wannasa Wintawong, took the limelight, along with her companion, Tanapol Kamkunkam, who played the feral boy, protector of the forest. The two played off each other so well that it gave the film a sense of neorealism.

The highlight was the character of the new male teacher in a backward school town. Preecha, played brilliantly by Asanee Suwan, walked away from being a Monk so he could teach the children how to face the World. The dilemmas he faced were conflicting with his morals, and those issues were dealt with intelligibly.

Director, Spurrier, seemed to be a one man band crew as he also photographed, edited, wrote the screenplay and even scored the music. He did a fine job in all those departments, and delivered a worthwhile film that dealt with various themes from bullying, school politics, belonging, spiritual being and it even touched on religion. Themes relevant anywhere in the World, and captured perfectly by Spurrier.

This movie is nicely done. We are put into a backwater area, where the crops are dying due to lack of rain, the young people move away, and the children are left with grandparents, and the school has little. Into that arrives an idealistic teacher who wants to experience the real world, having been a monk for 10 years. There is one other teacher and the headmaster. One of his students, Ja, doesn't speak, and she is relentlessly teased. One day, while chased, she runs into the forest. The schoolgirls stop chasing her, since the forest is considered haunted, and no one comes back who goes in. There, she comes across a totally feral young boy, who tells her it is his forest, and she is not permitted there. But Ja is stubborn and also very smart, and she doesn't accept his story of owning the forest. Ja's teasing gets worse, so she goes more and more into the forest, and develops a bond with the boy. They teach each other. But that doesn't always go well, and tragic things happen. It is a slow moving movie, but takes time to develop the story arc and blends in well the main characters. Will the teacher be able to make a difference against all odds? The deck seems stacked against him.