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Perhaps the greatest love story ever told was the introduction of this Thai horror flick that combine the winning formula of a love story combined with the supernatural element of afterlife.

The Plot:
Set during the warring years, Nang Nak was a simple and beautiful village girl with a haunting secret. While her husband went to war, she had died in labour and her pain and attachment to her husband grounded her spirit, keeping her in the mortal world, decaying and vindictive. But waiting. He returns and they continued living together with their baby, still so much in love but their neighbours moved away and he started to hear things about his wife being dead…

During my first encounter with this film, it was solely a love story that transcended death. It was beautiful in a ghastly fashion, the old-fashioned love story that wasnt so commonly told anymore, in an era where love is as complicated as life.

With my deepened awareness of Buddhism (somewhat), this movie has evolved into a story about the ramnifications of earthy attachment and the suffering that comes along with it. Its deeper lessons are not lost on me this time round. Mortality is limited which translates to the inevitability of death and thus suffering. Perhaps then death becomes not that scary, no matter how nihilistic our beliefs are on the expiration of mortality, because it can, like in the book ‘Tuesdays with Morris’ forces us to imagine the scenario of a bird perched on our shoulder daily and we asking ‘Is today the day i die?

And in the context of ‘Nang Nak’, her deep unyielding love for her husband kept her in a state of limbo, confined to the realm in between living and the dead. It is only with their coming to terms with her passing that her suffering can end.