Love or Lust between the two?

I just watched this film, which I missed in its general release, on Dvd. And by the way I am not Asian, although I am gay.
Here is my take on the film, after some time for deliberation. Admitedly, my immediate reaction at the end was confusion and annoyance that the central thread of the narrative seemed to get lost somewhere along the way.

The major clue to me (note the original title) lies in the opening text about the beast WITHIN EACH OF US that we need to 'tame' in order to be integrated into the human family and what you might call ones proper destiny. In the Soldier's case it seems that this Beast is his innate homosexuality, or at least his deep, sensual, yet in a sense delicate, attraction, bordering on love, to the peasant boy. This attraction rises to it highest tide immediately preceding the highly symbolic, quasi-mystical, extended episode in the jungle (their mutual kissing of each other's hands). At this point the peasant is an equal partner, if not the aggressor, in the mating dance that has begun. FORGET his being shy or straight.

So the Soldier enters the forest (often a symbol for the UNCONSCIOUS in literature and myth) on something not unlike a Hero's Quest to subdue this inner demon or Beast. He has his gun with him, food, etc. He knows that the Beast is elusive, cleverly hidden, even disguised, and formidable.They alternately track each other and both physically and spiritually wrestle with each other. Survival itself is at stake. One or the other must succumb.

BUT at the end the Soldier offers himself to the Beast (i.e., his HOMOSEXUALITY, or more specifically his love for the peasant boy). He indeed exorcizes demons, but not the ones we had been led to believe that he would--quite the opposite: the cultural/tribal/familial/religious rules socialized into him over many years that he now sees as inherently false or at least not applicable to him These are precisely the source of his deepseated doubts and fears). At last he can integrate ALL the parts of his Identitiy/Consciousness into a unified whole. He is now ready to go BACK to the world, announce his love to the boy, and commit himself to some kind of meaningful relationship. In hindsight the final moments of the film visualize in exquisite detail the unique human passage, that hopefully we have all experienced or will experience at least once, when one totally accepts the engulfing madness, the metamorphic power, the sacramental blessing, the human miraculousness of love.

In absolute cinematic terms, in order to better understand the pacing, silences, and contour and landscape of the interior struggle with ones unseen but powerful and most palpable demons that dominates the final sequences of this film, see the recent masterpiece "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring". These sequences cannot be rushed, nor these lanndscapes glossed over hastily, without sacrificing or at lease seriously compromising their existential authenticity. Not to mention the combined terror and awe that we experience when confronting them.

For me this film is a kind of meditation or poem on the mystery of love, specifically in this case
male/male love, and is to be cherished as such. I fear that we in the West are too literal in our coming to terms with such films. The cardinal rule is always in Art TO ENTER THE REALM OF THE ARTIST OR ARTWORK, not to force him/her or it to conform to ones own experience, biases, preconceptions and. experiential limitations. How can we grow otherwise, or gain wisdom!! And Art is one of the Master Teachers that life has given us. If possible, anesthetize the left brain, that linear part of us that prefers judging, analyzing and organizing experience over experience itself, before sitting down to view a film.






Film is such an amazing journey into other people heads, and other wondrous impossible places.

Well, I've experienced such similar responses to same-sex relationships and behaviour between same-sex partners such as the scene in the pavilion (where the lady comes to greet them) by people of all ages in the Northeast of Thailand, where I think the film is set, that the first part of the film seems quite realistic to me.

One Father's Day, for example, when we went to see my Thai partner's elderly farmer parents in their village, I was included in a ceremony where his father blessed his sons and their partners, and afterwards he joined my partner's hand and mine together, held them in his hands and smiled as he murmured over them. His mother always welcomes me warmly, and when we stay overnight, his sister makes up a bed for the two of us to share.

I have also had the experience of a Thai partner lying with his head in my lap when we were in the company of a family in a village upcountry. Onthat occasion, we stayed overnight with my lover's older brother in the married officers' quarters on an army base. My lover and I and his gay friend were put to bed together in the couple's double bed.