Nang Nak

Nang Nak, a ghost story based on an ancient legend, is a box- office blockbuster in Thailand to compare with Titanic in America. Not surprising because the film offers something for all tastes: eternal love, bloody scenes and the mysterious world of the supernatural. The story is set in the nineteenth-century countryside. Mak leaves house and home to go to war and leaves his pregnant wife Nang behind alone. When he comes home a year later, his loving wife is waiting for him with their first-born in her arms. The idyll is complete, be it that Mak does not have any explanation for all the rats surrounding them. What he doesn’t know is that during his absence Nang died in childbirth and that she and their son are ghosts responsible for several mysterious deaths in the neighbouring village. Nang Nak is never really scary, but does create a mysterious and uneasy mood, reminiscent of renowned Japanese ghost stories. This mood is evoked by the way in which Nimibutr visualises the surroundings: in a flamboyant style, sometimes lyrical, sometimes frenzied, and with an almost psychedelic view of nature, the most ominous weather conditions and evil creatures pass by. The cast – strikingly modern for nineteenth-century ideas – and the beautiful soundtrack have certainly contributed to the success of this morbid portrayal of an unattainable ideal: immortal love.