By One of the scenarios that can crop up when watching international cinema is that you might not be able to fully understand the cultural message that is being delivered. We, as people, are products of our environment. While it’s not difficult to read through research or anecdotes about tragedies, it’s impossible to put yourself into someone else’s boots who lived through such an event. That’s where I’m at with Snow in Midsummer, a well-executed and deeply personal movie that is about a subject I will never be able to fully grasp.
I can only do my best to explain my feelings on the film, but please do not take my criticisms as sacrosanct. I admire what director Chong Keat Aun has committed to film, but having no prior knowledge of what truly happened or how it directly impacted the culture and politics of Malaysia, I left my viewing feeling a bit hollow.
Snow in Midsummer
Director: Chong Keat Aun
Release Date: September 4, 2023 (VIFF), July 18, 2024 (Malaysia), July 22, 2024 (NYAFF)
Country: Malaysia (co-production with Singapore and Taiwan)
Snow in Midsummer gets its name from a classic Yuan Dynasty play of the same name, also referred to as The Injustice to Dou E. As the description provided by NYAFF details, this film and its titular namesake play mirror each other with regard to themes. The original play follows the trials and tribulations of Dou E, a child bride wrongly accused of crimes who is put to death by corrupt officials and whose death then makes three prophesized phenomena occur: blood raining from the sky, a three-year drought, and snowfall in the middle of June.
Now, that won’t mean much to any Western readers, but there is also a real-life parallel to this film. Snow in Midsummer directly recounts the events of the May 13 Incident, a tragic event in Malaysia’s history that directly followed the 1969 general elections. While I simply do not possess the knowledge of that event to accurately summarize it here (please click the link to learn more), what I can tell you from watching this film is that a mass riot erupted in the capital of Kuala Lumpur and it took the lives of an undetermined number of citizens. The number is still contested to this day, with the official record stating 196 were killed while other counts put the total at upwards of 600, if not more.
Snow in Midsummer takes place during two time periods, that being the day of the incident and then the 49th anniversary of the tragedy. Told from the perspective of Ah Eng (played by Koet Yenn Lim as a child and Wan Fang as an adult), we are taken through a couple of hours of the child’s life leading up to the riot that helps us understand her mother’s (Pauline Tan) love of Cantonese opera. While I’m a bit lost on the cultural specifics of an ailing leader who decides to bless Eng’s brother instead of her, the point is made pretty clear once the riots start: this turn of events inadvertently resulted in Eng avoiding death that day as her brother and father went off to the movie theater and were subsequently killed.
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This is the most affecting part of the movie for anyone without knowledge of the event or Malaysian culture in general. It starts rather mundane, but the explosion of violence creates a devastating scenario where we have to watch the remaining workers of an opera troupe huddle together in the dark while only the sound design takes over. It’s terrifying and I’m sure will be particularly triggering for anyone who had the misfortune of being involved that day.
There is a tremendous shot of the theater where Eng’s father and brother are killed that is sustained for the entire duration of her mother’s breakdown, really hammering home not only how tragic this situation is, but how seemingly small the government thinks of its citizens. I was touched by the comradery the theater troupe displayed but also dismayed by the violence that just took place.
In the second half of the movie, we flash forward 49 years to 2018 where Ah Eng is now married and is still looking for the graves of her father and brother. Her mother has since passed away and Eng is in a mostly disastrous marriage where her husband simply cannot understand why she still holds onto the memory of her family. She plans a trip to Kuala Lumpur to pay her respects and when she gets there, we learn that some new developments are going to seemingly wipe out one of the last remaining mass grave sites in the country.
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This part of the film didn’t hit me as hard as it deals with modern Malaysian culture. I don’t know enough about modern Malaysian society to understand why this incident still isn’t recognized or why any government body would find it acceptable to demolish the resting place of people tragically taken, but I suppose that also speaks to a broader theme of capitalism that is ravaging the world. At any rate, there is a powerful image toward the end of the movie where one woman is crying at the grave of her loved one while we see an excavator in the background doing its thing, hammering home how modernity is destroying the things we truly care about.
Where this film truly excels is in that visual and auditory storytelling. There isn’t much in the way of dialogue or a traditional plotline here, with Snow in Midsummer feeling like a slice-of-life tragedy more than a strictly linear film. Ah Eng’s plight is palpable, but discussing the impact of this event and the repercussions it has had is more intellectually engaging than watching the film. At the same time, I would have never learned of his incident had I not watched the movie, so there is certainly a strong educational core here.
As I said up top, Snow in Midsummer would likely work tremendously well if you had prior knowledge of this incident. The film was nominated for a bunch of different awards at the 60th Golden Horse Awards and it’s not hard to understand why. On a technical level, this film is impressive. I just wish I could form a better emotional attachment to the movie.
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To offer a comparison to a different widely known film about opera, the Chinese movie Farewell My Concubine doesn’t take place against a specific historical event but wraps its narrative around the story of its titular play in a way that feels organic. Snow in Midsummer does have parallels to its titular play, but they don’t quite work as well as the Chen Kaige movie. That could potentially be my lack of cultural understanding speaking, though, but I feel like the circular nature of Farewell really hammers home that its leading actor truly views himself as the lead of a play. Snow in Midsummer doesn’t hit me as if Ah Eng looks at her life like it was an operatic tragedy.
That said, I would be lying if I were to tell you I didn’t enjoy the movie overall. Not all “good” movies need to be enjoyable watches and I can even make a direct comparison to the Steve McQueen film 12 Years a Slave. That is a tremendously powerful movie that highlights one of the worst periods of American history and does it with a raw intensity that is unflinching in its portrayal. I don’t think I will ever watch that movie again, but I would be lying if I said no one should ever see it. It’s a masterpiece that needs to be seen at least once.
Snow in Midsummer is essentially that: a masterpiece of a movie that isn’t exactly entertainment, but is an important movie in its own right. That might leave me in a position where giving the film a number sort of fails what my review is trying to capture, but I guess we have to work with the systems we have. At any rate, if you wish to learn more about the greater world around us and how other countries have suffered at the hands of their government, Snow in Midsummer will do just that. Given some distance from the film, I might also be able to see more that I missed the first time.
