It’s not necessarily easy to determine if Chang: A
Drama of the Wilderness is a documentary or not. It’s also not
particularly easy to determine which, if any, of the scenes were staged or,
more likely, reconstructed. It’s supposed to be a depiction of life in the
jungles of what was then called Siam (not Thailand), but frankly, there are so
many questions that arise from watching the film, that’s it’s not (again) easy
to decide how much to believe as being true or accurate. It was filmed on
location, so it does offer us a view into what life was like for residents of
the northern region of Thailand – and perhaps, more importantly, how dangerous
life was for them.
The film mostly follows one family’s adventures over the course of about a year. A man named Kru tries to make a home in the jungle with his wife (Chantui) and his children, including his eldest child, a boy named Nah. Most of the story revolves around them and their encounters with the wild animals of the jungle. In fact, the animals are listed as characters in the film (“Wild Beasts”) as is “The Jungle” itself. Even the other people in the film are noted as “Natives of the Wild.” This really isn’t a character-driven narrative. It’s an action-adventure-documentary-ish. A title card during the opening sequence of the film notes that the jungle always “wins,” and after watching the range of dangers that Kru’s family faces, it’s hard not to accept that judgment.
The family tries to build a house on stilts to offer some protection, and they start farming rice and collecting a veritable ark-load of animals around them. One of the highlights of the film is the footage of the various animals of the region. At some point during the movie, we witness cats and kittens, goats, a wolf, a dog and its pups, oxen, pigs, a little bear, a porcupine, a mongoose, an anteater (although it looks a lot more like a pangolin to me), a baby anteater, and so many others. I’ll get to the dangerous animals soon since they are central to the narrative. Of all of these pets, though, only the pups are kept inside the house in order to protect them from tigers, but the rest of the animals seem fated to have danger be a constant part of their existence.
Oh, and then there’s Bimbo, a white monkey who seems to be as much a part of the family as anyone else. Bimbo even gets his own dialog cards! It’s as if the movie really wants us to know what Bimbo is thinking as he steals the blanket from the baby’s crib or when he’s running for his life from a leopard or when he’s trying to hold on as an elephant destroys the family home with him inside. It’s tough being a monkey, obviously, and the film features Bimbo a bit more than it does Nah, the first-born son of Kru and Chantui. And, yes, he’s listed in the cast as well.
One of the first dangers that Kru and his family must face is a leopard that has gotten into the pen holding the goats. When it returns for a second meal, Kru traps it inside the pen and shoots it. Of course, that’s not the last leopard they will likely face, so Kru asks for help from the chief of the closest village. Thirty men set traps and pitfalls and snares and nets to catch leopards. They succeed in catching one leopard, but they also catch a tiger in a net and kill it as well. In fact, a lot of animals get killed onscreen throughout this film. It’s pretty deadly stuff, and it’s not easy to watch. And, as you might suspect, just because you kill one tiger or one leopard doesn’t mean that you’re done with being stalked by others. You might wind up escaping from yet another one by clambering into a boat and paddling away as quickly as possible, as Kru and his family have to do at one point later in the film.
Possibly the biggest danger emerges when it’s time for the harvest. The title animal, a “chang” or elephant, is leaving evidence of the return of a large herd to the area of the jungle where Kru lives and close to where the village is located. The villagers are reluctant to believe that the so-called Great Herd has returned after so many years, even after a baby elephant is caught in one of the pitfalls and proves very heavy to pull out of the pit. It’s also not easy to train a baby elephant or feed it. When its mother completely demolishes Kru’s home, he and his family return to the village to live and try to warn the rest of the impending arrival of the herd. Once the herd shows up and demolishes everything in sight, the villagers get the point and start setting a trap.
What a doozy of a trap it is, too. It features very high walls and an entrance designed to funnel the elephants into a central pen area. The villagers converge on the elephants with the men disguised as trees – which must have been very disconcerting for the elephants – and set fires and drive the large animals into the pen. Then, in a remarkably colonialist gesture, they force the elephants to work for them. You might suspect that this subjugation of the elephants won’t last, but by the end of the film, there’s no indication that it isn’t working.
By the time Kru and his family return to the jungle and build another house, you start to wonder if it’s truly worth all of the struggle. I mean, there are still leopards and tigers and elephants (oh my!) out there, just waiting for their chance to show up and mess with the lives of these humans who have invaded their space. Maybe it’s true, as the film says, that the jungle is unconquerable. It’s certainly tough to tame, and there’s always a new threat on the horizon. Why bother? The film doesn’t provide an answer to that question, though.
The film was directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, who would later collaborate on the 1933 version of King Kong. It’s only Oscar nomination came in that “Best Picture” category that lasted on the first year of the awards: Unique and Artistic Production. Perhaps it was Cooper and Schoedsack’s work with Bimbo on this film – he does get his own closeups, after all – that convinced them to make a movie about a giant ape a few years later.
Oscar Nomination: Unique and Artistic Production
No comments:
Post a Comment