36

A well-meaning piece, with some interest for anyone who wants to see what daily life in Bangkok is like. But, I have to say that it looks like one of any number of film school projects where the person is asked to "capture your daily world, and immortalize it on camera". Hoo boy...

The creator must have gotten something out of it. The viewer? Not so much. The soundtrack is invasive for such an underdeveloped story, and the "action"... Nobody deserves to sit through an 84-second closeup take of a hand inserting a memory stick into a computer.

Thematically, 36's best passages involve melodrama around sudden illness, which itself is VERY well-trodden territory in Thai popular cinema. Nor is there anything unusual or distinctive about the camera work -- although it is clean and skilled. Yes, 36 is professionally handled, but I couldn't help thinking that what we have here is a talented craftswoman who really needs to find someone else to give her a screenplay.

A location scout is checking on a building for an upcoming movie & taking a lot of pictures of the building. The art director is also there & he avoids being in any of those pictures except one. Two years later and the location scout is in need of a building for another movie and remembers that building from two years ago and the art director. She pulls out the hard drive that has all the pictures she took but the drive fails.

The "36" in the title refers to the 36 pictures that used to be in a roll of film (tho some were 24) as well as the 36 individual scenes of this movie. Each with a title of sorts. I guess it was creative but didn't make the movie any more interesting.

Every scene in this movie moves at a snails pace. Especially early on, a lot of time is spent of the two characters walking & the sound of a camera clicking with little dialogue & you rarely see their faces. Really this could have been a 15 minute movie. Not much happens throughout.

I can't comment on the acting because there's almost none but I didn't see much. Most of the dialogue between the two main characters could have been adlib. After that there's no dialogue with emotion. Even when she realizes an entire year of pictures could be lost forever because the hard drive fails to load, there's no emotion at all. You'd think she would have expressed being upset.

A few times I thought it might be e getting interesting and then it just sort of drags on about nothing for a while. Just skip this one.

A movie that reminds us of the beauty of simplicity, and the peacefulness that might come with it.

And if above I am mostly talking about it from a technical perspective, I should also note that such simplicity disfavors the movie in terms of plot/script.

All in all, it is a nice viewing experience if you go with an open mind.