‘Once Upon a Star’ Pays Tribute to Thai Cinema

Since all they have is a projector without any speakers, the group’s diligent leader Manit (Sukollawat Kanaros) provides the voices for nearly all the characters on screen, including the women. This begins to annoy eager male viewers, as does the fact that Manit, his hot-headed assistant Kao (Jirayu La-ongmane) and their kindly van driver Uncle Man (Samart Payakaroon) often stop their 16mm projector to sell and advertise various medicines and home remedies. See, theirs is a “pharma-cinema,” one of several kinds of traveling businesses that would double as low-rent film exhibitors, at a time when live dubbing for both local and foreign films was common—both in cases where traveling troupes couldn’t afford sound equipment, or the production themselves didn’t have the means to record sound. This even led to some dubbing artists, like Tit Khiaw, becoming stars in their own right.

Manit and Kao have big dreams of becoming prominent dubbing artists too, but they’re also at the mercy of various bosses and administrators, who use movies to push products first and foremost, and won’t let them hire any extra hands.

However, in order to improve the viewing experience and rival similar traveling troupes, the trio goes around their bosses’ restrictions and secretly hires voice artist Ruangkhae (Nuengthida Sophon), a woman for whom dubbing is just a way to make money en route to other ambitions. Her fun and radiant presence improves the trio’s artistic presentation, but it also proves problematic for their well-oiled machine, through no fault of her own. As the film goes on, Manit and Kao both develop feelings for her, while knowing full well she isn’t destined to be a long-term passenger on their rural road trips, leading to growing jealousies that further threaten their dubbing outfit, which is already in danger of obsolescence thanks to the advent of better sound technology.

Because of the film’s throwback nature, each dramatic turn it takes feels either entirely sudden, or entirely predictable, with no real sense of build or foreshadowing. This structure is a flaw in the broadest sense, in that it makes Once Upon a Star feel occasionally like a passive, “lean back” viewing experience that demands little attention or commitment. However, this ends up being an emotional Trojan Horse, given the way Nimibutr and screenwriter Ek Iemchuen stealthily build a sense of comfort, only to eventually rip it away. That the film runs two hours and 18 minutes seems excessive at first, especially for a drama that often feels slight and familiar, but it’s a worthwhile journey given its destination.

Those familiar with the history of Thai cinema will know what a pivotal year 1970 was for the industry, and how the deaths of both Mitr and famed director Rattana Pestonji (the “father of Thai cinema”) marked the end of an era. Once Upon a Star is set on the cusp of this enormous sea change. The following decade would see a downturn thanks to competition from Hollywood, though this would eventually lead to a transformation of Thai cinema’s image on the world stage in ’90s and 2000s, thanks to the arrival of action stars like Tony Jaa, and “New Wave” filmmakers like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Nimibutr himself.

But where the Thai New Wave progressed in outlook and form, Once Upon a Star gazes backward in terms of both perspective and technique. It is, on one hand, a film of conservative artistry that says nothing new about movies or images, and reveals little about the era (other than to those unfamiliar with Mitr’s popularity). On the other hand, its relative simplicity allows for its performances to verge on pastiche. It may rarely be immersive, but it’s immediately absorbing as a time capsule of the era. It may not look like a product of low-rent, mid-20th century melodrama—it’s too neat and well-composed for that—but it feels like it exists in a world where that mode of cinema was paramount, and existed in symbiotic conversation with society, impacting how people saw and carried themselves.

The movie’s sudden turns may not be imbued with the operatic grandeur of the era’s cinema—the movie is far more observed than felt, with music that’s more comedic and propulsive than dramatic or weighty—but these turns are all indicative of a particular kind of broad cinematic storytelling that’s no longer the default lingua franca. In Hollywood, it’s often labeled “cheesy” (or overly convenient), and its modern incarnations are couched in irony. In Bollywood, it’s described with the adjective “filmy,” as though contrivances that yield the spectacle of bombastic emotions are an inherent fixture of the cinema (whether the term is used positively or derisively). Thai cinema’s Golden Age was similar in this regard, with stars like Mitr—which wasn’t his given name, but means “friend”—capturing a broad spectrum of emotions and filtering them through his unique charisma, leading to him becoming a household name.

This kind of charm becomes folded into the experience of Once Upon a Star, which attempts to balance a modern, realistic visual sensibility with a script and performances that feel yanked straight out of yesteryear. The tension between these two approaches doesn’t always work, and it sometimes leads to the movie feeling off-balance. But the further it goes on, the more it makes its gimmick known, with sudden emotional crescendos rising from nowhere, and breaking the illusion of realism put forth by its sensuous costume and production designs, as if its stylizations were trying to break out from their naturalistic confines.

It’s a gorgeous looking and feeling film, and though it spends most of its runtime re-forging nostalgia for bygone eras—its characters become vessels, rather than fully formed human beings—it succeeds in creating a sense of familiarity with Thai cinema history even for newcomers. It does this not through the recollection of facts, but through the re-creation of feelings specific to a particular time and place, treating cinema as a way of understanding life and dreams, rather than a mere collection of films. By the time its credits roll, its cultural specifics take on a luminous universality.

Once Upon A Star is now streaming on Netflix.