[Film Review] Shirkers (2018) 7.4/10

Singapore-born filmmaker Sandi Tan could have been a wunderkind in the cinema sphere when she makes an indie road-movie called SHIRKERS in 1992, aged only 19, yet the finished film never enters post-production, 26 years later, to purging herself of this ever-haunting memory after an unexpected turn of event, she has made an eponymous documentary tells the incredible story about SHIRKERS.

Starting like a teenager’s fanciful dream, tapping into the original footage of the film, old photos and sundry memorabilia, undergirded by Iris Ng’s distinctively ambient score, Tan walks down memory lane and recounts her life story, a misfit kid, she finds the kindred spirit in Jasmine Ng, both wallow in alternative cultural, artistic aesthetics of its time and feed on art cinema (Nouveau Vague) and western literature, fortuitously, they manage to actualize shooting a feature film, guided by their film school teacher Georges Cardona from USA, Tan writes the script and stars as the main protagonist, Georges is the director, Jasmine is the editor and fellow student Sophia Siddique Harvey as the producer.

It is surely ironic to shoot a road movie in an itsy-bitsy country known as Singapore, and the footage shows how jejunely idiosyncratic the original film would be, felicitously captures the teen spirit and flight of fancy, that now looks akin to a time capsule of a bygone era. Still the lingering mystery is, what actually happened to the finished film?

Buoyantly, SHIRKERS veers into a semi-detective story when, Georges abruptly absconds and evaporates from Singapore with all the film footage, when Sandi, Jasmine and Sophia all go abroad to continue their education, they never hear about him and the film ever since, until 2011, 4 year after Georges’ death, his ex-wife sends back the footage, bar its audio tracks, to Sandi.

Henceforth, audience’s curiosity is sizably whetted, and Tan’s ensuing quest of “who is Georges Cardona” spirits us away to Cardona’s hometown, interviewing his acquaintances and ex-wife (whose image is gingerly pixelated and only referred as “the widow”), and discloses a vague picture what a man he was, Nosferatu is the ostensible consensus: a fabulist who is envious of the achievement of his protégés, which he is not above to undermine at his convenience. Georges makes for such a fascinating case of mental complexity, the first impression he makes on others: emitting congeniality that incongruent with the cold glint in his eyes, might be the best encapsulation, however, SHIRKERS seem to pull punches in burrowing deeper into the truth (a half measure in our post-truth paranoia), whether it is from Tan’s own equivocal interrelation with Georges, or the widow’s conspicuous “I don’t know anything about it” disclaimer.

Among the interviewees, Jasmine and Sophia take the lion’s share of the screen-time, what feels real is the spontaneous exchange between Jasmine and Tan, the interviewer, their closeness isn’t dented in the elapse of time, but that barely conceals a wound left by the earlier misfortune, Jasmine stillthinks Tan, is partially answerable for Georges’ wanton action and Tan finally owns up in front of the camera “I am an a—hole!”. In the event, SHIRKERS is a classic lesson from the school of hard knocks, and an overdue exorcism that feels salutary to everyone who was duped for their youthful naiveté.

referential entries: Sarah Polley’s STORIES WE TELL (2012, 8.2/10); Malik Bendjelloul’s SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN (2012, 7.3/10).