Tears of the Black Tiger (2000)

Watch enough Thai titles and you'll run into (and hopefully embrace) their fantastic fluidity of tone, working by their own rules and inclinations and, for the most part, free from the constraints and limitations of narrow western marketing boxes. This film takes that flexibility even further - genres, western and Thai, become a riotous palette of textures, colours and emotions to play with. Whatever the story needs in each moment, that's what we're given, whether it's a piss-take of revisionist Westerns, an embrace of them, or the melodramatic love story they're wrapped around and woven through.

The art direction shows the intentionality of the filmmaking, with its shifts between organic and artificial. The colours are over the top and glorious, the violence is over the top and fake, sometimes comedically so. The music though, that keeps grounding it back in reality.

And there are so many details to notice along the way. For all that the result feels exuberant, chaotic and free, clearly a lot of care went into it. This is fascinating work.

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