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Thailand, France, Qatar · 2016
1h 45m
Director Anocha Suwichakornpong
Starring Visra Vichit-Vadakan, Arak Amornsupasiri, Atchara Suwan, Intira Jaroenpura
Genre Drama
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The lives of a student activist, a film director, an actor and actress, and a waitress unable to maintain a job are all loosely connected through the events of the Thammasat University Massacre of 1976, as the director is researching to make a film on the subject.
The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg
By the Time It Gets Dark has clearly been thought through, but it’s so cryptic that it cries out for, if not perfect explanations, perhaps footnotes. It’s so conceptual that it offers little for those not in sync.
The Playlist by Chris Barsanti
By the Time It Gets Dark jumps at first into an examination of Thailand’s repressed history of political violence and dictatorial control. But that initial pencil sketch of a thesis is soon shuffled away in favor of several other less-interesting story threads which add up to much less than the sum of their parts.
Anocha Suwichakornpong earnestly and ambitiously attempts to redefine cinema’s conventional grasp of consciousness.
The Hollywood Reporter by Clarence Tsui
Expanding her premise into a reflection on an artist's challenge in portraying reality, the director's By the Time It Gets Dark is a magical, melancholic ode to the intellectual's struggle against the forces of history.
The Film Stage by Ethan Vestby
If anything, this comes off as a bit of an imitation of Thai master Apichatpong Weerasethakul, yet without the presence of the supernatural that situates his films in something formally and culturally specific.
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
It's a film, a rather gorgeous one, of glances and ephemera and delicate metaphors.
A man, thoroughly dissatisfied with his life, finds new meaning when he forms a fight club with soap salesman Tyler Durden.
Two worlds. One home.
Is it better to speak or die?