SPIRIT OF THE MOUNTAIN
Thai documentary about remote Nepali village gets it right
IT WOULD BE EASY TO ROMANTICISE THE LOCATION AND THE LOCALS. BUT IF YOU SPEND A WEEK THERE, YOU KNOW THERE’S NOTHING ROMANTIC ABOUT IT
The rugged village of Gatlang in Nepal is the subject of a documentary film showing at select Major Cineplexes this weekend. Director Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Passakorn Pramunwong seemed to have picked an unexpected topic for their new non-fiction work (after their collaboration in the political history doc
Paradoxocrazy in 2013), and Gatlang turns out to be a soothing journey, part diary of a post-earthquake rebuilding and part portrait of the people in a remote corner of the world.
Pen-ek and Passakorn were asked by their German friends who live in Nepal to visit Gatlang, a small village once famed for its concentration of black-roofed houses before those houses were devastated by the 2015 earthquake, to document the rebuilding effort. They arrived with a vague idea of how they wanted to do it, but the place and the people they met shaped the human story that became the 88-minute film.
“People who visit Nepal go for trekking or to the Everest base camps,” said Pen-ek. “But Gatlang is not a tourist destination. There’s one crummy guesthouse, where we stayed during the shoot. Apart from that, it’s not the Nepal people have seen before.”
The documentary follows a familiar trope: a physical and emotional contrast between a tough rural existence and the promise of development in the capital of Kathmandu. We meet an old grandmother toiling away in her vegetable gardens, a family of four who dream of a better future, and two female teenagers, cheeks reddened by the perpetual cold, who have tasted life in the city yet prefer to stick around in their mountainous village.
The story could have flirted with the romantic idea of life in the mountains — and what breathtaking mountains Gatlang is cradled by. But Pen-ek and Passakorn know that to idealise Gatlang and its people is to betray their true spirit.
“It would be easy to romanticise the location and the locals,” said Pen-ek. “But if you spend a week there, you know there’s nothing romantic about it. The journey there took 12 hours on a cliffhanging road sometimes covered with mud. The temperature is way below zero. I realised soon that you had to be tough and strong to live there, and though the scenery was very beautiful, life isn’t always like that.”
The rebuilding effort involves erecting new houses to replace those destroyed by the earthquake. But the earthquake-proof design provided by the government to citizens isn’t practical with the agricultural lifestyle of Gatlang people: the new design designates a one-storey house, which is safer, while farmers need a two-storey house where they can store cattle and crop downstairs. That’s how they had lived for centuries, and such a mandate and break from tradition is one of the challenges facing Gatlang — and, in fact, nearly every ethnic, traditional community around the world.
In the end, Gatlang is the story of the spirit of the mountain, the spirit of nature and of humans who live, toil and try to build a future there no matter how hard it is.