In the early 2000s, when I started teaching, I developed a course called “The World of the Mekong” that was about the histories of what is now Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos (with some Burma and southern Vietnam as well).
My development of that course coincided with a kind of “golden age” in Thai filmmaking as there were a lot of films that were produced that focused on historical periods, from Suriyothai to The Overture.
Back then, I had to buy DVDs, and I would get them from an online site called eThaiCD.com. However, a lot of the DVDs would not work on American DVD players, so I went to a Japanese supermarket in Honolulu, Daiei (now Don Quihote), where they sold “hacked” DVD players so that people could play “international” DVDs.
I think most of the people who bought those DVD players were watching Japanese and Korean dramas, but I was strictly watching Thai films and dramas. And when I taught my course, I would literally carry that DVD player to class to show clips from the films that fit whatever the lecture that day was about.
By far my all-time favorite was the 1999 film Nang Nak. This is a film about the story of Nang/Mae Nak, meaning “Lady Nak,” a story that dates from the nineteenth century, and which by now has been retold multiple times in all kinds of media.
In this story, Nang Nak’s husband goes off to war when she is already pregnant. While he is away, Nang Nak and her child die in childbirth. In Thai culture, nothing is worse than a mother and child dying together because the two combine to create the fiercest of possible ghosts.
That is what happens, and when Nang Nak’s husband returns, he finds his wife and child waiting for him, not realizing that his wife is actually a ghost.
I will say no more about the story, so as not to spoil the plot for anyone who has not seen it.
However, I am writing this now, because I just saw an AI film version of the Nang Nak story. Entitled “Mae Nak: Thailand’s Most Haunting True Ghost Story.”
And it is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!!!
The film is created by a gentleman by the name of Matthew Phillips. Matthew received a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2013, has a book entitled Thailand in the Cold War (Routledge 2015), and his publications have focused on how traditional forms of ritual and ceremony were exploited by Thai leaders during the period to secure a Thai position within the Thai-US relationship.
In making this film, Matthew made a lot of wise decisions. 1) He made an “animated” film, which is smart because it makes any inconsistences between speaking and facial expressions more acceptable.
2) And he made everything in one language (English). While one can create dialogs in multiple languages using AI, my sense is that one really still needs to have native ability in those languages to ensure that the intonation and everything sounds correct (not impossible, but it requires more work and/or collaboration).
Meanwhile, the other point that is obvious is that Matthew put A LOT OF EFFORT into making this film.
Yes, we can prompt something in ChatGPT and often get what we want. However, that is NOT the case when it comes to trying to create film footage. It still takes A LOT of effort, but what Matthew shows with this film, is that it is nonetheless possible.
A couple of years ago I investigated the potential for creating films with AI, and I quickly gave up as I felt that the effort needed far outweighed the results that one could get. What Matthew’s film demonstrates, however, is that it is now possible to get good results. It still takes a lot of thought and effort, but one can now get good results.
Therefore, I would like to sincerely congratulate Matthew, and to encourage everyone to watch this film. This is an example of what can now be done at the “animation stage.” The “real life” stage is coming soon.
I find all of this extremely exciting and liberating because it means that we will not have to rely on “official” film industries to produce the media that we want. Yes, the early years of this century constituted a “golden age” for historical Thai cinema, and I am so grateful for that (!!!), but that golden age appears to have come to an end, as I have not seen a good historical Thai film in a long time.
I would love to see every place in the world produce an endless supply of good “traditional” historical films, but the reality is that this is impossible, so now we have AI to help us make the impossible possible, and Matthew Phillips has just shown us how to start doing that.
