Small Hours of the Night

Small Hours of the Night

Small Hours of the Night

70
70

(7.0)

1h 43m 2024 HD

Entertaining and relatively more interesting than simply providing all through definitive answers generates literary and cinematic narrations. This is the very principle that guides Daniel Hui in making Small Hours of the Night, an experimental drama that touches on complicated subjects such as feminism and abuse. The film depicts almost entirely one dialogue – a man and a woman engage in what turns out to be an interview – a policeman and a crook respectively. She tries to explain herself, and he is rather passive and attentive trying to grasp the meanings of her explanations that are at times unclear. Dissimilar or unrelated scenes were interjected by the writer in order to strengthen (or distort) an intelligent compelling narrative. Fascinated with Singapore’s criminal justice system as well as the background story of his film, Hui develops the main theme of the film – guilt versus innocence, and freedom threatened by imprisonment throughout this engaging but often painful drama.

It is difficult to categorize “Small Hours of the Night” because it hardly reveals where it belongs. There is so much story telling in this work that one will quickly dismiss the need to understand all references made in the work within a short time frame or even at all in many cases but which may become necessary at some later time down the line.

It’s an intense yet refreshing appeal that stretches in scope and depth areas that probably most people who ever catch such films do so once in a blue moon when pigs fly and sit atop a rainbow bridge that arches across a pot of gold held by a leprechaun hiding in a four leaf clover clumping unicorns and farting rainbows sprouting magic beans leading to a beanstalk ridden jack outside a haunted house resting at the other side of the seven seas between two apple laden trees dangling just a few inches away from a lovely lady hugging snakes behind her tall grass headstones inscribed this way thataway over the rainbow field hiding a dazzling emerald city surrounded by a yellow brick road patrolled by a silver scarecrow army shouting lion armies and flying bicycle riding monkey sent even more crazy than melting witches trying to plant their houses on the dancing hanbunny and trumpet strumming granny munchkin hat wearing dot.

What distinguishes Small Hours of the Night from other films is its reluctance to be pigeonholed into a particular genre or to be perceived in a straightforward manner. Hui’s narrative is constructive; it places demands upon the viewer, rather than merely expectingThey do not promise straightforward outcomes inviting the audience to rethink importat concepts in unfamiliar ways. Hui is thematically and stylistically competent, and because he is the author, he is forced to return to the same themes again and again. Small hours lets the viewers see only certain parts of a greater story that they must piece together. Their senses are bombarded by soundscapes that pull the unpredictability of the past & the present into the same constant and high pace milieu where starkly lit claustrophobic imagery fills your vision and makes your body feel cold. Sound( and some video scenes) does have a way of layering nervous anticipation with repetitive elements which this artistic piece.

The film is a two hander; Irfan Kasban and Yang Yanxuan Vicki play the interrogator and the subject of his questioning respectively.

We never understand the characters in this film, they are always quite distant. The film makes us develop a narrative and a theory about them, that we can never confirm even by the end. The performances go even further into the background, as Hui has his actors imbedded in these abnormal concepts. This movie is also split into a lot of dialogue where the speaker is not shown on screen, which gives the illusion to the audience’s eye that a lot of the cast members are in shadow for the duration of the film. Two different, although they rarely are. Most of what Yang and Kasban do instead depict approaches where their face and hand movements indicate more than the verbal part. Small Hours of the Night perhaps invests heavily in a character study, but simultaneously, it is a film that does not have a single character due to them being archetypes of two groups (criminals & lawyers).

Although Small Hours of the Night has a historical setting which requires viewers looking beyond the scope of Singaporean history, it does not remain particular about any of its components. By putting it in such a way that this narrative could take place anywhere at any moment (the past, the present, the future), Hui manages to make somewhat quite important remarks about, not only, the systems of law, but the people as well. The overall picture is awful: black and white, sharp corners and many shadows which contributes to the almost dismal look throughout the film. Here, sound is often applied in composer fashion where it is heard in succession to tasks as a motif which illuminates an otherwise boring aspect of everyday life as well as another theme as cyclical when we are with these guys for what seems like an eternity! Dread is further skillfully stimulated by Hui and he also never refrains from embellishing or developing specific created story based vagueness. In a film such as Small Hours of the Night the audience witnesses years pass by without the plot loosing momentum. Man, in a small room, enrooted into centeredness allowing us to enjoy the in-between imaginations by contemporary filmmaking artistry from one of the most remarkable Asian perspectives no more than a decade back, and this mixture of film is perhaps prevailing.

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  • Genre: Drama
  • Country: Singapore
  • Director: Daniel Hui
  • Cast: Irfan Kasban, Yang Yanxuan Vicki
Small Hours of the Night

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