royston tan's 15
ms lu bundled up the art papers in a nice stack after we all handed up our papers one by one. the last few mins saw me painting furiously for my life to complete the painting, n it was a relief dat i managed to paint wad i generally set out to paint.
the As were not perfect, but i haf no regrets. wadever happened, happened. i have given my best effort, n good AND bad, i will accept wadever grades i get. it has been a very painful n testing process, n i look back at it all wif a sense of relief. surprisingly, it makes it all very bittersweet. n IT FEELS SO DAM GREAT! woohoo!
suddenly, wif art over, i feel dat for the first time in 2 yrs, i actually haf no obligations to make. i don’t owe my life to anything or anyone, n people likewise don’t owe me anything.... -though at dis point, i wd like to remind someone out there dat dis fella’s still holding on to my gandhi n i wd want my gandhi back!- simply put, i can actually just take a step back n just well, simply do nothing. there’s a sense of emptiness left by the void that resulted from the sudden evaporation of the As dat happened overnight. i hope dis is not mid-life crisis coz i dong want to die at 36.
i’ve already made some plans of wad i generally want to do wif my long extended holidays til march, b4 ns takes over hahas. not currently planning to take up any job though. to those who did, or plan to, i suppose they haf their reasons but come on lar. we always complain abt having too much work. then when u actually earn ur freedom, pple decide dat working is better....its a strange logic to me. wake up ur ideas can? lolz.
finally located n watched the full uncut version of roystan tan's 15, only officially released here after 27 cuts which seriously did no justice to the work at all. the full version is much more cogent n cohesive. though, wif my rudimentary hokkien i cd barely catch the dialogue. there were no subtitles. it makes it abit diff to noe wad the hell's exactly going on, n for some parts, making sense of the stuff is guesswork. but the acting is so real dat i'm convinced dat i'm watching snippets of the lives of real pple unfold b4 my eyes.
conceptually, it does challenge the stigma dat we attach to pai kias here. yes these gangsters fight -n boy they realli fight- over the smallest things, but given the little dat they haf to hold on to, these things do mean alot to them. n i guess it was something pple like us will never understand. this movie gives a human face to these wayward youths, n show a more rarely seen graphic side of s'pore beyond the glitz of shopping malls n the supposedly goody-two-shoes image we haf constructed for ourselves. at times, i find it diff to understand why some of these youths r driven to drugs n suicide n all that stuff. but one thing's clear here, these pple deserve help rather than the cold treatment.
some emo scenes which show these pai kias breaking down in tears r left much to the viewer's interpretion. very original n refreshing. we realize dat beneath the apparent cold hard exterior, these wayward youths r only human after all. without a family to care for them, they toughen up n grow up quickly, n only haf their fellow ka kias to turn to for companionship. tension runs throughout their relationship, but they still stick to one another through thick n thin. water is thicker than blood here. n the meaning of true friendship comes thru. altho i eventually find it diff to feel for the characters -partly coz i catch less than 30% of the dialogue- royston's 15 remains a very informative, though-provoking n original work.
alvin ong dozed and watched the sawdust trampled night @ 10:01 PM
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