Chang: La giungla misteriosa

I had just seen Cooper's movie "The Most Dangerous Game" and really liked it. A friend of mine suggested this film also by Cooper (&Schoendack) "Chang". I'm not one who normally rents silent movies but glad I did this one. Explores family life in the jungles of Siam (Thailand)in 1925. The way the family interacts with an unbelieveable assortment of animals is astounding. The scenes with tigers, leopards, bears, snakes etc are not to be missed. I venture to say that the elephant (Chang) stampede scene in this movie has never been done the way its done in this film--simply fantastic.

There is more than a little irony in seeing a film that is so much like an anthropological field work, but with a superimposed plot structure and characterization that we now find unacceptably corny. The music is marvelous, by the famed Thai group Fong Naam, and the ethnographic details are rich.

In the 1932 classic "King Kong," the protagonist is a filmmaker who has made a living traveling to remote locations with exotic backgrounds to film wildlife adventures. Hence he journeys to Skull Island where he's heard a gigantic ape is living. The Kong backstory closely resembles the team made up Merian C. Cooper, who produced the original "Kong" 1932 movie, and his cameraman Ernest Schoedsack, when they received funding from Paramount Pictures to film their adventures in northern Thailand. Part-owner Jesse Lasky of Paramount was so impressed by the pair's previous effort where they followed a Persian tribe's migration, 1925's "Grass," he had his studio pay them by sponsoring the trip to this Asian country.

His instincts were spot on since the April 1927 release of "Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness" was received with great acclaim and rousing rounds of applause from packed theater audiences nationwide. The feature film was constructed as a documentary. If the viewer didn't know better, the two Americans capture the reality of a remote tribe living off the land in the jungles of Thailand as true-to-life.

But like most documentaries produced during the time, "Chang," which means 'Elephant" in Thai, was manipulated by the two filmmakers to fit their intended framework drawn up before they even arrived on the scene. The documentary's main character, Kru, was the guide for them and arranged for his family (besides a stand-in for his wife) and his friends to play the parts of members of a society that had long abandoned the practices displayed in the movie. Kru's background included not only being a guide, fisherman, hunter and trapper, but he was a practicing preacher as well as a carpenter.

Nonetheless, it was dangerous work for Cooper and Schoedsack to film the breathtaking wild animal footage. Cooper was at the ready with a gun when needed if the tigers, lions and elephants being photographed up close decided to lunge at the pair. Such a scenario played out on one occasion when a tiger approached uncomfortably too close to them. Another particularly dangerous set-up was when, using director John Ford's technique, Schoedsack dug a hole and positioned his camera to capture the rampaging elephants literally trampling over the planks lined above him. The weight of the heavy animals nearly broke the wood situated precariously just inches from his head.

The 18-month shoot was an ordeal for Cooper, who battled a case of malaria throughout the shoot. The production crew was forced to prepare for daily early morning filming since the animals were mostly active during the coolness of the day. They became lethargic in the afternoon and sought shelter as the Thai heat overtook the jungle. The humidity was so common that it wrecked havoc on the film stock and equipment, which had to be maintained on an hourly basis.

The manipulations of the producers are clearly shown in several sequences. The cross-cutting edits between man-hungry animals who corner the natives up a tree and the medium shots of the natives hanging waiting for relief shows the two scenes were clearly filmed separately. In the climatic sequence where a herd of elephants are stampeding and crushing the village's houses, the producers built miniature flimsy buildings and rounded a bunch of baby and juvenile elephants to make the model huts appear bigger than they really were. In another sequence, the crew tied up a baby elephant underneath a rickety tall hut and waited for the mother to come storming onto the scene. Sure enough, the irate adult elephant in a rage destroyed the building like it was balsa wood to free her baby.

"Chang" is still as thrilling of a movie to see today as it had been when it first premiered. Once the documentary was ready for release, Paramount wanted to use the reactions of animals caged in zoos looking at the projected film for publicity purposes. But studio executives were disappointed that so few zoos took up the offer. The recently established Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, holding its first Academy Awards in 1929, nominated "Chang" as one of three pictures for 'Unique and Artistic Productions.' The category was the only time the Academy listed it. But at the time it was considered as prestigious as its other category, 'Outstanding Picture.' In retrospect, "Chang" is the only documentary to ever have been nominated as a Best Picture.

Chang (1927)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

A rather remarkable and at times eye-opening documentary about a family living in the deep jungles of Northern Siam. The film follows their daily lives and shows us how they work, live, play and eventually hunt game. CHANG has been called a documentary but I do wonder how much "story" actually went on and it sure seems that a lot of the footage was probably shot and prepared in such a way that the filmmakers could tell a more dramatic story. That's certainly not a negative thing or a strike against the movie because there's no question this film is rather incredible considering when it was made and some of the footage that they gathered. I'm sure some people might be bothered by some of the animals that are killed but the way I look at it is that the people living in these villages were fighting for their lives so it's understandable that they'd kill the creatures that were trying to kill them. The filmmakers are quite respectful as we never see any of the actual deaths on screen so those sensitive to the material won't find anything graphic. I think the animal footage is some of the most amazing that I've seen. When you think of various animal footage from this era you think of poorly done stock footage but there were several times during the film that I was stumped as to how they got the shots that they did. The tiger hunt sequence is certainly one of the highlights of the film as it appears several times that the camera is right in the path of the beast. Another memorable moment comes at the end when the chang (elephants) stampede. There are countless animals on display from bears to snakes to anteaters to tigers and of course the elephants. Seeing these creatures in their natural homes was quite a bit of fun and it was also a reminder of how dangerous these things could be. The most interesting thing about this film is seeing how certain people lived during this time. Going into these jungles just makes one grateful that they weren't born there and at the same time you have to watch this and wonder if you could have done the things the people in these villages did.

This is a thoroughly amazing and brilliant film, that strangely enough not too many of the newer film-buffs have seen, despite the universal fame of Cooper and Shoedsack due to 1933's legendary "King Kong." Actually, they were almost as famous before that. When "Chang" came out in 1927, pre-King-Kong, post-Flaherty's-Nanook and Cooper and Shoedsack's own earlier "Grass," it became one of the most popular films ever made. The reason is simple: unlike the moderately successful, equally brilliant but more national-geographic-like and meditatively paced "Grass," (plenty of people may have accidentally stumbled upon it and seen it looking for films about Marijuana!) which deals with the emigration of Persian Nomads away from the winter and towards the land that has "Grass," this one is set in the middle of a sweltering, friggin' jungle in Siam (Thailand today), amidst wild animals, and has non-stop danger and adventure from beginning to end, not to mention a hilarious sense of humor.

The Thai woman in the film is actually not the spouse of Kru, the main actor, who was Cooper and Shoedsack's interpreter, but the wife of someone else living there. All these people were acting in the film without ever having seen a movie in their lives, reacting to these incredible events as they happened. Tigers, Leopards, rice farmers in the middle of a jungle running up coconaut trees to escape from them, Monkeys named Bimbo, and of course, Changs (meaning Elephants in the local language of Siam), and the big Chang/Elephant herd stampede, one of the greatest sequences ever filmed by anyone--all this is in Cooper and Shoedsack's film, which they shot all by themselves, with NO CREW, NO LIGHTING EQUIPMENT, and a 70,000 dollar budget which went up only to about 95,000 when the film took a little longer than expected, and they put some money in out of their own pockets which the studio later reimbursed. The new music by Bruce Gaston is absolutely brilliant, using a combination of traditional Thai music and modern sounds but never sounding trite or superficial. So many silent films suffer from bad, endlessly repetitive soundtracks that make you want to tear your hair out, this restored version of "Chang" on Image DVD isn't one of them. Rent it off the Internet or just go ahead and buy it, it's worth every penny, has a good transfer, an informative commentary track, and believe me, it's one of those films that you'll want to watch over and over again.