Tag: Sivakumar Palakrishnan

#LookAtMe (Ken Kwek, 2022)

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The unequal authoritarianism of contemporary Singapore conspires against an aspiring YouTuber in Ken Kwek’s surreal drama #LookatMe. Opening with a title card explaining that 2015 prominent activists have jailed for breaking arbitrary laws relating to obscenity and illegal assembly, the film throws its progressive hero into a kafkaesque quest for justice after he’s arrested for publishing a video mocking a homophobic religious figure simultaneously asking why it’s alright for a pastor to spout hate speech but illegal to challenge him and pitting the hero’s desire for fame against that for genuine social change. 

Sean (Yao) does indeed want fame, running an unsuccessful YouTube channel while alternating between mocking more successful stars and emulating them by playing cruel pranks on his understanding mother in the hope of going viral. His life changes when his girlfriend Mia (Shu Yi Ching), whose parents are religious, invites him, and his gay twin brother Ricky (also Yao), to attend an evening service at her church in an attempt to curry favour. The church turns out to be of the evangelical variety, opening with a Christian rock performance before showman pastor Josiah (Adrian Pang) arrives on stage and embarks on a homophobic rant insisting that he has no problem with gay people but is dead against them overturning Singapore’s colonial era law criminalising homosexual sex. Ricky is obviously upset, unsure why Mia whom he assumed to be progressive would have invited him to such an event, and leaves abruptly upsetting Mia’s father in the process. 

Sean is so outraged by the whole thing that after noticing that Josiah gets a lot more hits than he does with his hate speech, he makes a video mocking his messaging and satirically accusing him of bestiality which eventually goes viral but also gets him arrested after the church’s many followers ring the local police en masse. Sean can’t understand why he’s in trouble with the law for publicly insulting a religious leader while Pastor Josiah is seemingly free to spread dangerous and hateful ideas with no fear of challenge or dissent. Banned from social media, he’s picked up again for making an apology video and is then eventually sent to prison for 18 months while facing a defamation trial in his absence. 

Even his new cellmates can’t quite believe he’s been put away for something as ridiculous as a YouTube video yet his plight exemplifies the authoritarianism of the contemporary society in which there is no guarantee of free speech nor safe path to protesting injustice. Ricky is later arrested too for “illegal assembly” when he and three friends hold up a banner protesting the case because four people outside together is apparently prohibited by law. As he points out, how are you supposed to hold up a giant banner with only three people? Sean tried to stand up for Ricky, and Ricky does the same for Sean deciding to come completely out of the closet as an LGBTQ+ activist with the support of their mother Nancy (Pam Oei) as they fight for justice but then faces random violence on the streets from homophobic vigilantes while she is later fired from the primary school where she works after refusing to sign an apology or renounce her political views. 

The film takes aim at social hypocrisy as Sean is sexually abused by the prison warden while inside, and the pastor seeks to preserve his business interests calmly telling Nancy that he bears her no grudge but won’t drop his defamation suit because he has to protect the Church from similar forms of attack. He says this while lounging around on his yacht while servants bring him drinks, clearly incredibly wealthy from the proceeds of his religious life which whichever way you look at it is not a good look. In any case the film’s ironic conclusion which vindicates Sean and the place of video in social protest cannot but seem a little flippant in its implications which reduce the pastor to the position of hypocritical villain while Ricky’s conversion to Christianity feels like too much of a concession even if making clear that it is not religiosity that is being demonised only those like Josiah who would seek to profit from hate and repression. Nevertheless, Kwek presents an alternately heartwarming and harrowing vision of a close family torn apart by outdated and irrational laws and in the end left only with violence as a potential motivator for change. 

#LookAtMe screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

NYAFF trailer (English subtitles)

Repossession (Goh Ming-siu & Scott Chong Hillyard, 2019)

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Reposession poster“I bet he doesn’t even know he’s in a cage” the “hero” of Repossession is told on asking his best friend if he thinks a hamster they’re looking at is happy on his little wheel. Like the rest of us, he’s ensnared by a cage called capitalism, but also by series of smaller cages inside it which range from toxic masculinity and persistent social conservatism, to the supernatural and the ghosts of past trauma. The biggest demon of them all, however, is pride, and as is so often the case, it’s those around him who will eventually pay the price.

50-something Jim Tan (Gerald Chew) is a success. He’s got a high ranking salaryman job which evidently pays enough for a multi floor apartment with its own private pool in one of Singapore’s most exclusive housing complexes, as well as a six figure luxury car. Given his relative seniority, it therefore seems slightly absurd that he’s pulled aside one day by a younger man from HR who tells him that he’s been identified as one of several employees to have underperformed in the previous year and is being a given a choice – accept a termination or agree to resign. Jim is upset. He insists on seeing someone higher up but all to no avail and is eventually fired after making a scene in an admin assistant’s office.

Jim tries to tell his wife, Linda (Amy Cheng), he’s lost his job, but loses the stomach for it when she starts telling him that their daughter’s (Rachel Wan) uni fees are going up and they’ve been invited to a swanky wedding at which they’ll be expected to contribute a hefty gift. Confident he can get another job despite the fact he’s over 50 and will be applying as someone fired from his last position, Jim becomes one of the many salarymen ghosts haunting the local parks, leaving for work as normal in the morning but with nowhere to go. All around him he starts hearing voices shaming him for being one of those men, a failure, someone who couldn’t provide for his family, a loser without a job too deluded to realise that men over 50 don’t get hired in Singapore’s competitive job market – something rammed home to him when he finds himself sitting on sofas next to fresh-faced graduates interviewing for entry level positions at a fraction of his previous salary.

Jim’s friend tells him that perhaps this is for the best, that perhaps the universe is telling him it’s time to take a break and play some golf. He asks him what the point of all this ceaseless toil really is, to which Jim poignantly answers that he did it for his family but the claim is exposed as somewhat hollow when he starts to hide the unpaid bills right next to his world’s best dad mug. Jim inhabits a conservative world in which men provide and women stay home. It’s important to him that he’s built a comfortable life for his wife and daughter in the status conscious society, but he’s entirely blind that in doing so he’s fenced them inside a cage of their own. Jim’s wife Linda gave up her job and started a charitable organisation, doing good deeds looking after vulnerable people and busying herself with philanthropy. Finally learning about their money troubles, she quite reasonably decides it’s time to get a paying job again but her determination to help save their family only further wounds Jim’s fragile sense of male pride as man who can no longer support his wife and daughter even as he “degrades” himself using his flashy car to pick up fares as an Uber driver.

Jim is a man haunted by a sense of failure stemming back to a traumatic incident in which he failed to protect his younger sister whose ongoing medical bills are another worry on top of his domestic responsibilities. He sees himself, rightly or wrongly, as pursued by a soul sucking monster which is why everyone is always telling him he looks “drained”, neatly explaining his recent spell of bad luck. The real “monster”, however is the one inside – latent male violence born of an inferiority complex and resentment towards a high pressure society in which economic success and social status are the only things that count. Jim struggles to “repossess” himself, while watching his demons try to repossess the people he loves, but never realises quality of the fear that he’s fighting. “What makes you think you’ve hit rock bottom?” a passenger ominously asks him. When you’re sitting this far from the bars you hardly notice the cage at all.

Repossession was screened as part of the 2019 Five Flavours Film Festival.

Original trailer (English, no subtitles)