MAKING PEACE Resignation, the Road Movie and Kirsten Tan’s Pop Aye

The typical road movie finds profundity in the quotidian, drawing together apparently unrelated encounters into an overarching, epiphanic tapestry. It’s tempting to so categorise Kirsten Tan’s Pop Aye (2017), which follows the journey of middle-aged architect Thana (Thaneth Warakulnukroh) and his childhood friend, a fully-grown Indian elephant named Popeye, across Thailand. While Thana and Popeye’s journey hit the familiar narrative beats of the road movie, however, Tan’s screenplay resolutely resists romanticising the open road.

That’s not to suggest Pop Aye avoids the contemplative rhythm found in the greats of its genre. To my eye, it most closely resembles – in both tone and narrative – David Lynch’s gentle The Straight Story (1999); just trade the old ride-on mower for an old elephant, and Midwest America for northeastern Thailand. The films share the same sedate pace, the same undercurrent of surrealism, the same defiance of a neat narrative, while nonetheless coalescing into something coherent. As in Lynch’s film, Tan frames her protagonist’s journey as an opportunity for him to reflect on his life – the road before him, and the road stretching into the distance. Pop Aye posits that the meanings we impose on our personal histories are just as impermanent as the lines drawn on this road: fading