Starring and scripted by Somtow Sucharitkul, one of Thailand’s foremost composers, this horror outing about a murderous music conductor is pure Oldenburg.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Thailand, lockdown protocols banned live music performances and any gatherings of more than 20 people. It was impossible for the Sinfonietta to rehearse. Somtow worried about his students, about their musical growth and the impact on their mental health.
Cue Paul Spurrier. The British-born, Thai-based director, an old friend of Somtow, was also concerned about the damage lockdown was doing to those in the film industry. He wanted to get them back to work. And he’d spotted a loophole in the COVID-19 regulations. “The government had banned public gatherings, they’d banned orchestral rehearsals and concerts, they banned eating in restaurants,” says Spurrier. “But, provided you exercised caution, you could still make a film. So if we made a movie about an orchestra, we could have them rehearse and perform a concert, within the film.”
Somtow continues, “Paul pitched me his idea — about this frustrated conductor who abducts a youth orchestra and takes it to a mansion in the middle of nowhere and goes mad. It was so insane I fell in love with it. I went home and wrote the script basically overnight.”The choice is not as out there as it seems. Before becoming his country’s most acclaimed classical composer, Somtow Sucharitkul had a successful career, under the pen name S.P.
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