Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Watched the slightly edited version of the short film 15 by Royston Tan on monday during gp.
It's acted out by real-life gangsters, painting the truth about their lives. That's also the reason behind the change in actors after each short chapter in the short film. They either got caught by the police or went into hiding to evade the authorities' arrest, hence unavailable for filming. Oh so real.. the cold hard truth..
The film's mostly in Hokkien with no subtitles, so i dun quite understand some parts of it.
There's not much plot for us to understand anyway, it's just snippets of gangsters' lives.
Some themes explored include: neglected teenagers, suicide, tattoos, piercings, gang fights, drug taking, drugs smuggling, spewing vulgarities, self-mutilation, public nuisance... Their anger, misery & frustrations that few can understand, so they seek solace in one another, forming a gang. It also shows the attitude of the general public towards them, the prejudice held against them & stereotyping them into what they perceived as troublemakers.

Some parts of the film can be hard to digest. Kinda disgusted at a few scenes. No appetite to eat during break time later. When one gangster slashed his arm repeatedly to vent his anger, i think the director made him really do it. So u can imagine real blood & messy cuts and all... *Pukes* Another part is where one guy pierced another guy's lip for him. He pierced one side, then said 'Erhmm bu4 hao3 kan4 leh... pierce another side for u.' We went 'erhmmmm... not funny wor... this kind of thing how can try again de??' The swallow drug-filled condoms part was stomach churning. My gp tutor said maybe the director made the actor swallow to capture the 'REAL' scene. But that was really gross & could tell that the poor chap had a hard time.
When the film ended, 1 classmate was surprised to hear that it was based on true stories. Just goes to show that how sheltered our lives are, knowing little about those neglected youths who are of the same age range as us.

Warning: those who cant tahan blood, vulgarities... pls dun watch ok? Dun say i didnt warn ya. Haha... cuz there's this part where one youth was shown as the record holder of being able to shout the most vulgarities in different languages within a minute or so... kinda funny la... haha though i cant understand a thing. My mind's still quite clean i guess.

yunn. at 10:28 AM