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OK, having dealt with Need For Speed, we can move on to The Rocket, which is not based on a video game and which does not feature souped-up Mustangs and which does not come with a violently thumping sound-track or any ‘Vrooooooooms’, although there is an ox, who sometimes goes ‘moo’. Oh, the lovely, lovely peace of it.
It is set in Laos, and is a feel-good, triumph-over-adversity story involving a small boy and, although this outcome also isn’t in any doubt, at least the journey is fascinating and it’s been made with a heart that is warm. It opens with a woman giving birth to twins, one dead. The woman’s mother-in-law wants to kill the surviving child because twins, she insists, are bad luck, but eventually she is persuaded to spare the boy’s life. Ten years later, that boy has grown into our lively, plucky hero, Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe).
Ahlo and his family live in a small traditional village but, due to a dam-building project, are forced to move to a new community where they have been promised electricity and sanitation and all manner of modern lovelies. They set off, with aforementioned ox heroically pulling their little boat uphill, but a shocking calamity diminishes their numbers, and it is Ahlo who is blamed, as he is blamed for everything, being cursed.
They arrive at their relocation camp, which has neither electricity nor sanitation and not even a sniff of any modern lovelies. It’s a dump. Here, though, Ahlo makes friends with a little girl old beyond her years who lives with her uncle, an ex-child soldier and alcoholic who wears a purple suit and models himself on James Brown (the singer, not the former editor of Loaded). Together, they all up-sticks, trying to find somewhere to stay, and eventually arrive at a village, which is holding a rocket festival, mounted to kick the rain gods up the bum and put an end to a drought. Can Ahlo build the biggest and best rocket and win the cash prize? Can he prove he is actually good news?
I think you know the answer to that. I think you probably even know the actual moment it starts raining. But there is so much pleasure to be had along the way. The performances, mostly from non-actors, are affecting and genuine and encompass surprising idiosyncrasies. If cornered, for example, Ahlo may simply bark. And aside from offering insight into a country rarely seen on screen — I was as much fascinated by the landscape and clothing as anything — it wears its politics lightly and incidentally. It is directed by Kim Mordaunt, an Australian. The focus is kept on Ahlo and it’s through him we see how peoples and environments are affected by globalisation, plus the legacy of war. This is a land scattered with unexploded bombs dropped by America during Vietnam. In one scene, a village house appears to be propped up by large missiles. The ending may be sentimental, but death and loss are everywhere.
So this is 96 minutes I won’t begrudge you, although I’m not going to forget about the 129 still owed, and which I am willing to take in the form of weeding, say, or car washing, or generally doing stuff around the house. No need to book yourself in. Just turn up. It’s the least you can do. Vroooo….OOOOOOOM!
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Also by Deborah Ross
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