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Happy Old Year

Happy Old Year is a film by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit that explores the clash between minimalism and the messy memories of youth through the story of Jean, a young woman returning to Thailand to create a minimalist workspace in her family's cluttered shophouse. The film delves into themes of memory, regret, and the emotional complexities of letting go of the past, particularly in the context of generational conflicts between Millennials and their parents. With strong performances and a reflective narrative style, the film highlights the struggles of balancing personal aspirations with familial ties and the weight of memories.

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35 views

Happy Old Year

Happy Old Year is a film by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit that explores the clash between minimalism and the messy memories of youth through the story of Jean, a young woman returning to Thailand to create a minimalist workspace in her family's cluttered shophouse. The film delves into themes of memory, regret, and the emotional complexities of letting go of the past, particularly in the context of generational conflicts between Millennials and their parents. With strong performances and a reflective narrative style, the film highlights the struggles of balancing personal aspirations with familial ties and the weight of memories.

Uploaded by

thantzin.ygn83
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Happy Old Year

Minimalism-obsessed adult versus


messy memories of youth…
After a venture into the form of film essay in Die
Tomorrow and documentary in BNK48: Girls Always
Happy, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit comes back to
classical fiction narrative with Happy Old Year.
Similarly to his 2015 film Heart Attack, Thai
filmmaker focuses on the sentiments, habits,
attitudes and experiences shared by the generation
of Millennials, now 30-somethings building up their
career. In Happy Old Year the never-ending process
of growing up and change, attempts to move on and
let go of the past is brilliantly reflected through film
form, trends in contemporary aesthetics that is
closely linked to Millennials’ lifestyle and specific
common philosophy, all wrapped up in one magic
word – minimalism.

Happy Old Year follows Jean, a young woman who


has just came back from Sweden to Thailand. She is
offered a job in a design company that perfectly
matches her deep interest in Scandinavian design,
but under the condition of her having an office. She
is determined to turn the commercial part of her
family’s shophouse into a white, minimalist working
space. Located in 1960s modernist, concrete
building, the outside fits perfectly but the inside is
filled with the remains of the music school and
instrument repair shop that used to be run by Jean
already deceased father. The private rooms of her
mother, brother and Jean herself are cluttered with
objects amassed over the years, all connected to
memories or people from the characters’ past.
Packing everything into black trash bags and
throwing away will not be as easy as Jean had
imagined, especially after she comes across one
specific photo camera.
The narrative is based on a proximate
retrospection. Happy Old Year starts with shots of
white, clean, minimalist spaces, as Jean is
interviewed about the idea behind such design and
the complexities of the process. She seems to be a
role model, a successful young entrepreneur with
great perspectives for the future. However, it is the
past that is crucial in Happy Old Year or more
precisely, people’s attitudes towards it and the ways
of dealing with regrets and pain. Memory works as
a self-defence mechanism, in its selectiveness, it
archives the experiences that are most useful for an
individual to survive, regardless of them being good
or bad. Memories of happiness can be as easily
forgotten as the ones of sadness, so we all live in a
state of self-regulating amnesia, producing our own
subjective view on the past, the present and the
future. Moreover, such seemingly benign self-
defence mechanisms or anti-virus software can go
corrupted very easily and infect the rest of the
system as in the case of Jean and his mother. The
younger woman seems cold-hearted, mechanical
and determined to achieve her goal, whereas the
older one is overly emotional and almost hysterical.
The two ways of dealing with the past, indifference
or overattachment, are extreme but most common.
The scenes of arguments between daughter and
mother are heartbreaking and utterly real, thanks
to the actresses’ performances as well as brilliant
scriptwriting. Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit once
again grasps the small moments of daily life and
gradually builds up a story that makes the audience
care about the characters, because it is easy to
strongly identify with them.
Although the topic is huge and prone to lose control
over, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit keeps
characteristic narrative and visual rigour, akin to
the minimalist form he reflects on. This auto-ironic
and self-conscious move adds new layers of
meaning to Happy Old Year, which envisages a
world where static images take control over
people’s ways of seeing, especially among
Millennials. There is something spellbinding in the
whole process, because the photos actually replace
a real object, regardless if it is highly aesthetic
curated visuals of Millennials or Generation Z craving
for images of randomness and chaos. There are
several scenes where Jean takes photos of the
photos with utmost piety, whereas she is merciless
when it comes to objects that visibly weights on her
and seem to be limiting her freedom or maybe
restraining the selfishness? Often there is a fine line
between the two and Happy Old Year sharply
explores this ambiguity.
The film also features outstanding acting
performances. After the main role in immensely
successful Thai teenage heist thriller Bad
Genius (2017), Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying
takes the centre stage as Jean, acting out the
character’s inner conflicts, guilt, dissatisfaction
with reality, both superiority and inferiority
complex. Nevertheless, it is Apasiri Nitibhon that
delivers the most powerful performance as Jean’s
mother. The distant past is never fully explained but
the heavy load and difficult experiences are written
out on the character’s face and ingrained in her
gestures. Although only episodic, but memorable
role. The male characters tend to be toned down
and remain in the background, but the actors’
performances are solid.
Although throwing away objects seems an ordinary
and everyday practice, but in fact, it encompasses
so many emotions, regrets, arguments with friends
and family. It even can lead up to the major
generational conflict, because regardless of the
times, the attitudes towards the number of objects
owned vary immensely between the all-discarding
young and the all-amassing old. In Happy Old
Year Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit once again
grasps the complexities of memory and identity that
clashes with the individual pursuit of the ideals of
progress and modernity, all resulting in the need to
come to terms with one’s own inevitable loneliness
and selfishness. Highly relatable.

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