A spell-binding story about a couple’s journey into the unknown. Spearheaded by splendid cinematography and hypnotic images, Nelson Yeo dives deep into the ocean, history, and the inner self in his award-winning film, Dreaming & Dying.
Singaporean director Nelson Yeo won two major awards at this year’s Locarno Film Festival with his debut, Dreaming & Dying (Hao jiu bu jian). The First Feature Prize and the Best Film in the Concorso Cineasti del Presente (Filmmakers of the Present) section. It’s no question that this film was one of the more challenging yet relaxed works which draws from past Asian films, most notably Apichitpong Weerasethakul from its mythological folklore to its meditative pace or Hang Song-soo based on the circular narrative and form (zooms and repeated dialogue amongst characters). Shot in only five days and focusing on three characters, Nelson develops a story about a triangle relationship, ecological destruction, and an ancient Chinese folklore about the eight immortals fighting the Dragon King of the East Sea as seen on the mural of the Haw Par Village location in Singapore.
The story begins with a reunion of a friend group, but only three were to make it. A married couple and Heng meet up in their hotel where they congregate. Although beginning here, Yeo shifts multiple plot devices to turn the story into a dreamlike state, jumping between time and space to uncover this labyrinthine dynamic. The screenplay is a plot shapeshifter that jumps from one narrative device to another – a book on a mermaid’s tale, a journey into a forest, and surreal flashbacks invoking Chinese mythology that draws parallels with climate change. Underneath it all is the basis of the film, a couple recollecting and reflecting on their relationship and their selves through their reunion with Heng’s impending doom.
Stylized in a rich blue first half representing water and its ever-changing nature, Yeo moves from the comfortable setting of a hotel to the natural world of the forest and sea where the married couple bring a fish across the land to release it at the shore. The film takes a surrealist turn when Heng reveals who he really and what haunts him. This journey for the couple is more of an awakening one for the two as they begin to discover the decaying aspect of their relationship.
The thematic elements in Dreaming & Dying draw from historical folklore such as the invasion of Neptune’s Palace drawing parallels with the contamination of the fish in the sea due to pollution. Yeo’s ability to intertwine between fantasy and reality is elevated from his dream-like sequences and blurred memories. In one sequence, the wife is seen walking through a cave with sounds of her husband’s snoring adding another element of the surreal. Within this scene, she is walking through murals of ancient Chinese folklore seeing the beginnings of Heng’s life. Heng, the propeller of the film is the main driver between two subjects at a similar point in time before collapse – the relationship and environment.
Yeo’s structure choices are a bit challenging to viewers due to the shift between fantasy and reality, past and present, but his ambitious first feature is told in a simple and economic fashion. With a grand statement on ecological and historical awareness, Yeo uses minimal characters and locations to give us a story on redemption and fate, both in the environmental and humane sense. At first minor due to its simplicity, Yeo sets forth a thought-provoking allegory on the mythological past to the present, delivering an idiosyncratic film about the changes in human relationships and nature.
