HOM RONG (The Overture)

[papeetepatrick]

Has anyone seen this exquisite gem?

Here's a synopsis by someone at IMDB. I just watched it, and it's one of the best movies about musicians I've ever seen. Not one of the best films perhaps as 'great film', but it does tell the story well and primarily you get to hear a LOT of the music, not just little snippets. This is not so hard to find on CD, but otherwise you have to go to World Music Institute and hear it live, which is best, of course, but these films of traditional players are not all that common. I highly recommend it, and you hear modern Thai sounds in the 'movie score music', as well as a contemporary Thai pop song in the closing credits. Lovely actors and actresses and beautiful photography as well. This is from 2004, which is very heartening, as I can think of only a handful of films of this sort, such as 'Farewell, My Concubine', about Peking Opera. That's a better film and has more drama, but this simpler one is excellent too, and the music is ravishing:

"Based on the life of Luang Pradit Pairoh (Sorn Silapabanleng) the most revered traditional Thai music master who lived during the reigns of Kings Rama V to VIII, the movie traces the life of Sorn, who picked up the ra-nad ek (Thai xylophone) mallets as a small child and played all his life. The backdrop to Sorn's life tale is the story of Thailand's classical music from its golden age during the reign of King Rama V to near extinction after the end of the absolute monarchy when the government banned it as uncivilised in the 1930s -- a time when Field Marshall Plaek Pibulsongkram tried to push the Kingdom into the modern era. The film shifts back and forth from the time when Sorn was a young man, playing in a xylophone duel with the intense Kun In, to the 1940s, when Thailand was under Japanese occupation and Sorn's playing would provide some inspiration to the oppressed citizenry of the time. Written by Wise Kwai"

Directed by Itthisoontorn Vichailak (all the other names are equally difficult)