muay thai Great Muay Thai Documentary Short - PTT Petchrungruang

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfnZ-WdK4FI

This is just a wonderful short documentary on the Petchrungruang star fighter PTT. It's very hard to encapsulate how sweet and kind a fellow PTT is - hey, he absolutely loves Jaidee - but he has an aura. Sylvie wrote about him and his story that is hinted at in the film - but the film itself in its very simplicity, and in how his words in translation guide the basic themes, I just find very moving. What a cool dude he is. It's only about 8 minutes, give it a watch.

[threeoaks]

This is just a wonderful short documentary on the Petchrungruang star fighter PTT. It's very hard to encapsulate how sweet and kind a fellow PTT is - hey, he absolutely loves Jaidee - but he has an aura. Sylvie wrote about him and his story that is hinted at in the film - but the film itself in its very simplicity, and in how his words in translation guide the basic themes, I just find very moving. What a cool dude he is. It's only about 8 minutes, give it a watch.

Holy sh*t what a total sweetheart tough guy.  Thank you this was beautiful.

[Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu]

Holy sh*t what a total sweetheart tough guy.  Thank you this was beautiful.

 

It's hard to overstate how sweet the guy is. It's kind of amazing. And as he's gotten older he's developed some movie star looks, so people are clamoring over the rights to him.

The film also was shot and made by a Thai which seems to, at least to me, give it a different feel than very similar films made by western eyes.

[dtrick924]

It's hard to overstate how sweet the guy is. It's kind of amazing. And as he's gotten older he's developed some movie star looks, so people are clamoring over the rights to him.

The film also was shot and made by a Thai which seems to, at least to me, give it a different feel that very similar films made by western eyes.

It's beautifully shot. I appreciated the English language voiceover, sometimes I have a hard time reading subtitles.

[threeoaks]

It's hard to overstate how sweet the guy is. It's kind of amazing. And as he's gotten older he's developed some movie star looks, so people are clamoring over the rights to him.

The film also was shot and made by a Thai which seems to, at least to me, give it a different feel than very similar films made by western eyes.

Yeah there are some really clear cliches with the "highlight reels" in the US (that I see anyway).  1.  Smoke.  wtf.  2.  Night jogging.  3.  Personal hardship tale is told with completely different tone.  Yes personal hardship can make a fighter, but your friend's story is told with such matter of fact grace.  Hard to pin down the difference but I love it.  4.  Showed him looking quite tired in training, talked about quitting, showed footage of him seemingly being dominated in the course of talking about his losing streak (which sets up the story of his comeback nicely and speaks to the organic narrative nature of Thai fight scoring you wrote about elsewhere).  Sorry to go on but I have a horrible ankle sprain and too much time on my hands while I ice & elevate. 

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

It's beautifully shot. I appreciated the English language voiceover, sometimes I have a hard time reading subtitles.

Yes, I feel that the voiceover adds a lot. For me, reading subtitles makes me feel like I'm missing the visual poetry that's happening in real-time with the images because I have to keep looking down to the words. The young man who did the voiceover and made the video is very close to PTT's age as well, so they've grown up together to some degree. Speaking the words of someone you know well is quite lovely.

[Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu]

Yeah there are some really clear cliches with the "highlight reels" in the US (that I see anyway).  1.  Smoke.  wtf.  2.  Night jogging.  3.  Personal hardship tale is told with completely different tone.  Yes personal hardship can make a fighter, but your friend's story is told with such matter of fact grace.  Hard to pin down the difference but I love it.  4.  Showed him looking quite tired in training, talked about quitting, showed footage of him seemingly being dominated in the course of talking about his losing streak (which sets up the story of his comeback nicely and speaks to the organic narrative nature of Thai fight scoring you wrote about elsewhere).  Sorry to go on but I have a horrible ankle sprain and too much time on my hands while I ice & elevate. 

I loved that PTT"s take on the tale of personal hardship is, "we're all struggling." In the US it's all this story of how everybody else has it easy and the struggling fighter is the isolated case of a solo salmon swimming upsteam. His battle is against the fear of quitting, rather than a "poor me" attitude that underlies a lot of western narratives, even if a lot of those are truly rags-to-riches, amazing tales.