The Rocket (M). Director: Kim Mordaunt. Starring: Sitthiphon Disamoe, Loungnam Kaosainam, Thep Phongam, Sumrit Warin, Bunsri Yindi. 92 minutes
A psychologically scarred war veteran struts about dressed as James Brown. An annual festival sees men celebrate explosives, in a country riddled with unspent American bombs. The Rocket, an Australian production set in Laos, finds plenty of humour within a decidedly bleak historical context.
'That one of the main reasons we wanted to make the film,' says writer and director Kim Mordaunt. 'You've got a country that's been bombed [during the American war with Vietnam] more than anywhere on the planet, yet there's a beautiful spirit in the people to move forward and find positivity.'
As far as Kim and his wife, producer Sylvia Wilczynski were concerned, The Rocket had to be funny and highly entertaining, not only to pay tribute to this spirit, but also to open it up to as many potential viewers as possible. 'We hoped it might draw a wide audience into a place that they might not normally go,' says Sylvia.
At the heart of The Rocket, then, is a simple quest narrative that explores the universal themes of growing up and dealing with loss. The hero is ten-year-old Ahlo (Disamoe), who, following a series of misfortunes that devestate his family — including the loss of their home to an industrial dam project, and the untimely death of a close family member — sets out to prove that he is not a bad luck charm
He soon falls in with streetwise nine-year-old Kia (Kaosainam) and her uncle Purple (Phongam) — the aforementioned eccentric veteran — who become his solace from his emotionally distant father (Warin) and sternly matriarchal and superstitious grandmother (Yindi). His quest eventually leads him to the Rocket Festival, where he has the opportunity not just to compete for a cash prize, but also to attain a kind of symbolic redemption.
'The festival started as an ancient animist fertility festival that happens at the end of dry season,' says Wilczynski. 'It later got mixed with Buddhism ... but since the war, it's got this whole other layer, of shooting back to the sky. There are a lot of ex-military people who are still very damaged but also have good knowledge of explosives!'
The festival evokes a sense both of rejecting the historic aggression that Laos suffered during the war — American bombs caused some 700,000 civilian casualties between 1964 and 1973 — and also of thumbing