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Apichatpong Weerasethakul (director), Mysterious Object at Noon, 2000. 83 min.

^{“Enlisting locals to contribute improvised narration to a simple tale, Apichatpong charts the collective construction of the fiction as each new encounter imbues it with unpredictable shades of fantasy and pathos. Shot over the course of two years in 16 mm black and white, Mysterious Object at Noon established the director’s fascination with the porous boundaries between the real and the imagined.”—The Criterion Collection}

There is a child who can’t walk. There is his teacher. There is a ball. Then the ball is a child. Then the ball/child is a demon. And the teacher is gone.

In this surreal tale, the interplay of orality and visuality works at the core of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s (Khun Joe) Mysterious Object at Noon (or translated from Thai, Dogfa in the Devil’s Hand). As we witness the genesis of a folklore—perhaps in its most literal sense as the lore of folks/villagers—we are also invited to its (re)enactment. Fiction and reality are in constant merging in the act of creation in this drama-documentary.

I want to zero in on a crucial moment in the film which I think captures the problématique of Khun Joe’s experimental debut feature film. The driving narrative begins with an interview: a woman sold by her father for 700 Baht. To which the interviewer responds, “Now, do you have any other stories to tell us? Either real or imaginary?” Jarring as it is, the tale of the child, Dogfa, and the mysterious child/thing begins.

This juxtaposition of narratives seems to suggest two things. That fiction is just as real as her reality. Or, that reality is just as real as her fiction. What, then, is real? In both cases, reality was built through her narration, but one that is mediated through the camera.

For in the presence of the camera, the subject is always fictionalised. That our narratives are, in effect, a production. And the documentary itself, through the process of directing and editing, is a re-production. That in spite of Walter Benjamin claims that through the filming set-up with the camera and the crew, filmmaking contains within it “highly significant […] social terms”, the aura of the narrative is still tentative, destroyed even, until the final edit.

Borrowing from Filipino ideas of the psyche, pakikibagay—an adaptation of the self in relation towards the other—goes both ways in this social issue of the narrative aura, especially as the film continues to build on this narrative started by the woman. Before each narration, recordings of the previous storytellers are played. On one hand, through this prompting of the documentarists and their camera, the subject adapts (nakikibagay) to the aims of the creator. On the other hand, truth itself adapts to how it is perceived in this edited aurality of the film. We can think, therefore, of the process (i.e., exquisite corpses) as a practice in service of the other and not of the narrative.

It is through this that we can understand the destruction of the aura as done simultaneously with the destruction of the narrative. While the film hinges on built-upon narratives (as well as in the literal act of narration), the film challenges the narratocratic logic of filmmaking. Through this, the visuality and orality of the medium itself are highlighted. Narrativisation is but in service of the unique filmic experience, within which Khun Joe’s cinema can be characterised.

We can never know whether or not the woman sold by her father had seen how her story had grown—whether it is her own, or Dogfa’s. Neither can we ascertain if she was Dogfa herself. After asking for “any other story”, the documentarist adds, “it can be real or fiction”. There was a moment of silence. Perhaps, there was no choice to begin with.

How to cite: Flores, Richell Isaiah. “Simultaneities and Narratives in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mysterious Object at Noon.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 22 Mar. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/03/22/mysterious-object.

Richell Isaiah Flores is a graduate student and a part-time lecturer at the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. He finished his BS degree in Applied Mathematics with a minor in Philippine Literature from the same university. He is also a member of Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo (LIRA) [Center for Imagery, Rhetoric, and Form]. His poetry were published in HEIGHTS, Ateneo’s literary folio. Visit his website for more information.

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