favorite film music

Yes or No_ Sarasawadee Wongsompetch; 

Song: One Day If You Have the Courage_ Composed and Performed by Budoka.  

Briefly, this piece of music is added to the context in which the lesbian couple has to be apart. Pie comes from an upper class Thai family who follows tradition and customs. Therefore, she really disapproves of homosexual love. Then, she shares her room with a look-like-boy girl, Kim. Kim is very caring, kind and sweet. At first, Pie is pretty reluctant to interact with Kim but gradually, they form a nice friendship. After a period of time, Pie realizes that she unconsciously falls in love with Kim, a kind of innocent love. However, they always have to hide their love because Pie feels ashamed and is scared to let people know about it, especially her mother. In this scene, Pie decides not to let her mother down and break up with Kim. But the main reason is that she is not brave enough to face either truth or prejudice. Both of them feel broken-hearted and helpless.

The lyrics of the song are extremely related to the film’s story. The song goes, “It’s like our love has to be underneath dark shadow. I’d like to see you brave enough for our love . . . and there’s a path that’s waiting for us not far from here . . . For one day, I just want you to look up for the stars, and don’t be shy with the sky . . . don’t avoid anybody’s eyes . . . For one day, I want you to dare to look at people’s eyes and tell them that we’re in love. . . “It is easily seen that Pie and Kim have such a beautiful relationship that I find the film lovely and easy to watch. The kind of love this film depicts is not “dark” or hard or too stressful. Everything is just so nice and natural. Because of this, the audience can feel the connection between these two characters. Similarly, they can also understand the conflict inside them and the misery they suffer. In this scene, the music plays such an important part in reflecting their deep sorrow, internal conflict and confusion. That relationship gives Pie a complex which is described in the song. Pie finds it hard to be brave and go for her real love. She also finds it awkward and shameful to go against the tradition. All these feelings are not expressed in dialogues, but in the song.

It is plausible to say that every image going along with the song is related to it. For example, the image of their bursting into tears, which expresses their breakdown. The image of Pie’s going back to the room that they share and sitting on Kim’s bed. This image implies how much she misses Kim. The image of a sad face on the sandwich; Pie recalls their memories and so on. Of them all, the image that impressed me the most is that image of Pie’s opening a paper butterfly and finding Kim’s writing, “One day that you’d be brave enough, we’ll fly together.” This message matches the song the most. It can be said that the song helps spread the film’s message, which is that it takes their braveness to fall in love.

This song triggers one of my memories. I started a love story two months before I moved to the U.S. I remember how we also had to hide our love. We were like part-time lovers. Standing in front of people, we pretended to be friends. Now we are thousands of miles apart. Sometimes I feel like it is a dream just to come back to my country. I feel helpless. But I tried much harder than I can ever imagine I myself could. Now that I have saved enough money and I am flying back to Viet Nam and staying there for a month after this semester is over. Listening to the song in that specific context reminded me of how I have tried for my love. It is a very lovely film.    

In my opinion, this piece of music is used in the rightest scene of the film. It is effective in evoking the audience’s emotions. This is the point at which they need to decide to move on with their love or give up. If you watch this film from the beginning, to this point, you can understand how they are brought together by destiny and their own characteristics. Thus, you may not want to believe that they decide to break up. And then, the music is added to the right moment. It is like a flashback of their memories and their current depressing condition. Watch this film from the beginning and this piece will bring a lot of you to tears for sure. And of course, for those who fight hard for their love, they will find themselves very much related to the song in particular and the whole film in general.