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Death gives life meaning, so they say, but if death is such a normal part of being alive, why do we live continually in its shadow? We spend our lives talking about a tomorrow which might never come, but it’s those tiny moments of mundanity which make life worth living. Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s Die Tomorrow (พรุ่งนี้ตาย) examines the “last day” of a number of oblivious citizens of Bangkok who are busy living life “as normal” little knowing that everything they do will be for the last time.
Shooting mainly within an oppressive square, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit rams his point home with his first vignette in opening with a newspaper report recounting the death of a student in a road traffic accident the night before her college graduation. He then introduces us to a gaggle of excited students eagerly talking about horoscopes and their dreams for the future. We never quite figure out which of them will be dispatched to get more beer. It could be anyone, anywhere – even you, even right now.
As the ticking clock and time card remind us, 2 people die every second all over the world making dying possibly the world’s most popular activity. Most people dread it, but for one very elderly gentlemen it would be a relief. Convinced that his advanced old age is either a result of genetics or a mistake by someone upstairs, he selfishly wishes that he’d died before his wife and son so he wouldn’t have to go on enduring the pain of their loss. Meanwhile, a little boy quizzed on his beliefs about the afterlife is convinced that death is peaceful because everything just stops. He feels pretty much OK with the idea because he googled it straight away as soon as he found out so it all seems very straightforward. Nevertheless, he’d rather not know when death is coming because that would just make him “sad” and then he wouldn’t be able to enjoy his remaining time.
Death is, however, something you have almost no control over. A melancholy man gets his toenails clipped by his loving wife who is suffering from a terminal disease and awaiting a transplant. Grimly, he tells her that with every death there is fresh hope as he prepares for a trip abroad unaware that, as the preceding title card told us, a plane is about to go missing in the skies between Thailand and America. Meanwhile, across town a man pushes a stool up to his balcony and prepares to jump. Before he does so, he leaves a message for a friend instructing him to pass on his thanks and apologies to the others, affirming that he had no desire to bother them but he has tried his best and life is cruel. An old lover, presumably having her reasons and well within her rights, refuses to open her door to him and remains unrepentant even when her friend suggests she may regret it if he really does do “something stupid”.
With each death the frame expands to its fullest, as if echoing the sense of emptiness in the very present absence of the recently deceased. A brother somewhat irritated by his sister’s abrupt and unexplained return from the US, declares that her death (in a freak accident while parking his motorbike to take a picture of a cute puppy) has reminded him of the preciousness of life. He might have been embarrassed before, but now he makes a point of hugging and kissing his parents, telling those close to him they are loved in case there is no later opportunity to do so. The sad death of a salaryman, in his sleep in the stock exchange lying undiscovered for five hours, seems all the more absurd and pointless while that of a veteran musician, soon after getting his head massaged by his loving daughter, seems like the best of all ends – lying peacefully at home in the summer breeze. Yet as the old man tells us, those who are “young” should have no fear and simply live. Less about the omnipresence of death than the ephemerality of life, Die Tomorrow is a quiet paen to the small pleasures of being alive, discovered in mundanity and the knowledge that every breath may be one’s last.
Die Tomorrow was screened as a special preview at the BFI Southbank and opens in UK cinemas on 26th July courtesy of Day for Night. It is also currently available to stream in the UK via MUBI.
International trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 