Ambition is a quality that should be savoured when it is found in its purest form, since it has become increasingly rare to find people who are willing to challenge and provoke in equal measure while still showcasing their audacity. One of the more intriguing examples of this concept in practice that I encountered recently comes in the form of Lucky7, which is a film that is credited to seven different directors: Junfeng Boo, Tze Chuan Chew, Tzu Nyen Ho, Sun Koh, K Rajagopal, Tania Sng and Brian Gothong Tan, being those cited as having helmed the film. This is certainly not the first time we are looking at a film that has over half a dozen filmmakers, but in the case of this one, it was based on a deliberate decision made by one of the directors in an effort to subvert the narrative structure we normally imagine as being intertwined with the filmmaking process. By putting together a group of Singapore’s most promising directorial voices and giving them a very peculiar but interesting assignment, the film manages to be one of the most inventive, brilliantly off-the-wall projects we have seen in years, a delightfully irreverent and often quite provocative film that may have been made over a decade ago, but has managed to offer us insights into a new kind of artistry that has supposedly not been pursued further, which signals the fact that this film was quite likely severely underseen, which is an unfortunate fate that often tends to befall some of the most brilliant works we have seen over the years. There is always a chance for rediscovery, and as one of the most unique films of the past two decades, both in terms of form and content, Lucky7 deserves a lot of our consideration, especially since there is something much deeper simmering beneath the surface of this bizarre but captivating film.

The aspect of Lucky7 that piques our curiosity is how it was conceived. Sun Koh had the idea to make a film based on the party game Exquisite Corpse (where participants take turns writing a line of a story, only having access to the final word of the previous sentence, which results in a jumbled mess of surrealist brilliance) – and he assembled six other directors, commissioning them to make 12 minutes of a feature film in which all they had access to was the same lead actor, and the final minute of the previous director’s segment, from which they had to glean as much information as they could and assimilate it into their own contributions to make it as cohesive as it could be given the lack of context with which they all had to work. This is an ingenious concept and one that I am surprised has never been attempted previously, especially since this was a game that supposedly was enjoyed by the Surrealists, who we know had a major role in developing cinema over the years. It is almost a shame that such an ambitious concept was used in a film that is basically unknown, or that no one was inspired enough by the excellent concept to develop their own version. This is a fantastic method of storytelling that tells us a great deal about how art is conceived and created. Many small details come through in this film that bear a lot of resonance, but the main aspect that keeps us engaged is how it manages to take a relatively impossible idea and turned it into a masterful and sometimes quite enthralling project that looks at narrative structure as something that is not rigid or adherent to any rules, but rather flexible and quite challenging when its boundaries are tested, which results in quite a strange, off-kilter experiment that is both inspiring and quite entertaining.

It is certainly easy to look at Lucky7 and focus solely on the structure and how it was created, since this has been the main aspect on which the film has been sold, which is certainly appropriate. However, it does tend to feel like there is something deeper beneath the surface, which usually emerges when we least expect it, which is the general aspect of the film that keeps it so interesting, even when it is sometimes inexplicable and ventures off into the most off-the-wall narrative territory. Ultimately, this film served to be as much of a narrative experiment as it was an exploration of the psychological breakdown of a man who exists in a society that he doesn’t quite understand. The extent to which the directors managed to communicate general themes while making this film is not clear, but it is quite obvious that some thematic undercurrents flowed throughout the film at key moments, allowing it to be much more complex than we’d expect, even after the novelty of the structure has worn off. Making sense of this film is a fool’s errand, since the overall plot is not particularly meaningful (which is intentional – this film wasn’t conceived with a consistent storyline in mind), but we can still see brief glimmers of complexity scattered throughout the film, which is one of the many reasons it is such an unexpectedly intriguing film in terms of how it pushes narrative boundaries, making some fascinating choices in how it constructs its general ideas and weaves these disparate details into something quite captivating, even if it takes some time to fully comprehend what it being done.

Yet, Lucky7 would not be worth our time without someone of considerable talent tying the project together. Using the term “brave” to refer to an actor’s performance is sometimes quite lazy, since these are ultimately people hired to convey a particular set of emotions as mandated by the director. It may be overly reductive and perhaps even slightly controversial, but it is something that often tends to be quite overused in the context of any performance that is not built along orthodox standards. In the case of this film, Sunny Pang delivers a performance that may not be brave in the sense that he is baring his soul or deepest emotional vulnerabilities, but rather tasked with pushing himself nearly to his breaking point, which is quite an intimidating task, but one that Pang (who was not all that experienced as an actor at the time) was more than willing to embrace. He is the only constant actor throughout the film – this was part of the agreement between the directors, since having the same actor playing the same unnamed character would prevent the film from feeling like an anthology, and instead help tie everything together in one cohesive package – but he is incredibly captivating, being able to handle all the challenges that the directors throw in his direction, which makes a big difference in how we perceive and understand this film and everything that it represents. This protagonist is not someone we ever truly understand, and despite being the one person who actually knows what the previous segment entailed, Pang does exceptionally well in following the various directors’ ideas, morphing himself into various versions of the same character, demonstrating remarkably chameleonic abilities throughout the film.

It isn’t often that I find a film that is so deeply original in its fundamental construction that it incites a feeling of sincere passion – over a century since this medium was invented, it is rare to stumble on something so unique, it actually feels like a promising testament in favour of the future of filmmaking. The conception of Lucky7 may seem like nothing more than an experiment on the part of the directors, and one built along the lines of seeing if it was possible to take such an absurd concept and weave it into a coherent film, but once we have gotten past the initial jagged nature of the narrative and instead begin to see the underlying details, the more evident it becomes that there is something much more profound scattered throughout this film. We never truly know what this film means, and there is always the likelihood that there is nothing deeper to this film other than it being a project conceived by seven rambunctious filmmakers with a taste for chaos and more ambition than they knew what to do with, which is quite an astonishing achievement, and one of the many aspects of this film that feel most profound and meaningful, despite the sometimes offbeat sense of direction brought throughout the story. It never quite meshes in the way that it may have expected, and it is certainly quite rough around the edges, but there is always something of value in a film that is willing to challenge and provoke something as deeply ingrained in the artistic culture as narrative structure, which is suitably eviscerated by this group of filmmakers, who showcase raw, unfiltered audacity in their continued quest to do something valuable throughout this intriguing and thought-provoking work of pure surreal chaos.