Singapore Urbanscapes - The minimisation of the individual in 12 Storeys

Iconic images of Singapore’s city skyline and high-rise buildings often function today as depictions of how far and fast the nation has advanced from a fishing village. Beyond telling a story of progress, these almost utopian portraits of stellar urban planning raise scepticism into their function as human living spaces.

The perfect and polished standardisation of the nation’s architectural structures hint towards the characteristic conformity and rigidness that is often raised as a major social problem for Singaporeans, and this critical view is reflected in local films which strive to depict private Singaporean lives.

Eric Khoo’s 1997 film 12 Storeys, centres around the domestic struggles of a diverse group of characters in a Singapore public housing block. While the stories of the characters in the film barely interject on a narrative level, the characters are aligned by a joint desire to transcend the confines of their lives in this residence, highlighting the inability of state’s public housing inability to provide its citizens with meaningful lives.

Housing blocks indifferent to the individual

The opening of 12 Storeys features a range of wide shots of the exterior of the housing block in which the film takes place (0.09-0.18), depicting the building and its rows windows from afar. At the end of the film, as the stories reach their emotional climax -  the controlling and socially conscious Meng has an emotional blowout with his teenage sister Trixie, Chinese immigrant Lily cries over her former lover back home, and the lonely San San contemplates suicide. As their stories conclude, we see the exact same shots of the housing block as we did at the start (1.39.39-1.39.50).

The shots remain unchanged from the beginning, and juxtaposed against the strong emotional confrontations which precede it, create an eerie sense that the personal and domestic struggles of its residents are largely inconsequential in the broader national narrative. There is an element of incompatibility created by the jarring contrast of the scenes, hinting that this urban space is inadequate at fostering meaningful domestic life.

The use of wide shots, when compared with the tight and mid shots which make up the majority of the film’s body, dwarfs the perspective of the character’s and makes their personal struggles seem insignificant. The repetition of the shots ignores the depth of character transformation which has occurred over the film, hinting that mainstream society is indifferent to the emotional and personal struggles which the characters experience. The cluttered shot of the urbanscape portrayed just before an unnamed man in the film jumps to his death is also repeated just after the explosive climax of Meng and Trixie's argument, and the train continues to whizz by (1.57.57-1.58.03). The urbanscape trails on, indifferent by their life changing moments.

Hopes for change and social mobility become wishful with this depiction of a stubbornly unchanging environment, and it feels that there is little to nothing one can do to change their conditions. The lack of coherence between the internal lives with the external and physical creates the feeling of isolation, and the positioning of the urbanscape in these pivotal moments of the film suggest that these structures were not just incompatible with domestic life, they could have been indirect causes of the problems.

The urbanscapes as 'Home'

Calling these still images of the urban 'active contributors' to the character's social problems seems to be an overstatement, as the silence of the nation's landscapes is never presented as explicitly threatening or oppressive, and they even offer characters the opportunity to pursue their own identities. However, the issue ultimately arises when these places carry with them the notions of ‘home’.

Reflected in the classic 1998 National Day Parade song Home by Kit Chan, the lines “There's a place that will stay within me, Wherever I may choose to go” (Chan, 3-4) and “This is home truly, Where I know I must be” (Chan, 9-10), ‘home’ is a place which embeds itself into a person’s identity, and holds illogical sentimental value. As these expectations collapse, the feelings of loss set in.