Writer-director Sorayos Prapapan’s Arnold Is a Model Student was partly inspired by Thailand’s 2020 Bad Student movement, a series of demonstrations carried out by students opposed to their national school system’s outdated disciplinary practices and abuses of power. The film is set primarily in and around a Bangkok high school, and it follows the emergence of the protests alongside the emotional development of the titular student.
Though he enjoys flouting rules of conduct in class, Arnold (Korndanai Marc Dautzenberg) is academically gifted enough to have earned the respect of his scheming, reputation-obsessed headmaster (Virot Ali), who enlists him regularly as a kind of ambassador for the school. This is the first in a series of semi-legal initiatives run by older authority figures who seek to exploit his abilities and achievements, and he reluctantly plays along, apparently out of some sense of obligation toward a system that previously afforded him the opportunity to study in America.
The conflicts caused by Arnold’s rebellious streak and his proximity to the levers of power are also complicated by a desire to avoid the fate of his deported dissident father, which is briefly hinted at following an argument between the boy and his mother (Siriboon Naddhabhan). Arnold is eventually recruited by a man named Mr. Bee (Winyu Wongsurawat) for a particularly dubious position that also proves to be highly lucrative: helping older students to cheat on the national civil service exam, as part of a fraud racket that seems to date back several generations.
Starting out as a wryly amusing portrait of institutional hypocrisy, the film gradually becomes more confrontational in its attitude toward Thailand’s oppressive patriotism and widespread corruption, as instances of bribery and deceit pile up and the state’s rotten core is revealed. Despite the clarity and severity of its political stance, the film nevertheless maintains a carefully controlled deadpan tone, deploying mostly static handheld shots and unhurried editing to force the absurdities of Thai society to speak for themselves. Providing an engaging counterpoint to all this cynicism, Prapapan observes the quotidian rhythms of school life with a close attention to detail, and depicts the Bangkok skyline and other urban scenery with a low-key warmth.
Blending into the documentary-like aesthetic, real-life smartphone footage of the Bad Student demonstrations and their suppression by police is occasionally used to drive home the gravity of the situation more fully. The contrast between these shaky, hectic nonfiction images and the mostly gentle presentation of the rest of the film also serves to illustrate a fundamental disconnect between the country’s sanitized propaganda and its violent reality.
This gulf is mirrored in the increasing isolation of Arnold from his peers throughout Arnold Is a Model Student. The characteristics that have made him popular and successful end up working against him, as the slow-burn storytelling of this deceptively simple coming-of-age satire builds to a quietly devastating finale. While small-scale protests over one teacher’s (Niramon Busapavanich) use of corporal punishment soon escalate to school-wide walkouts and demands for major educational reform across the nation, Arnold’s bulletproof immunity and unruffled indifference cut him adrift from the collective social movement bubbling up around him.
The on-screen overlay of an open letter written by indignant students is echoed later in the film by a similar presentation of the recommendation letter that he was given to help him transfer abroad, and this allows his final catharsis to be underlined subtly, without disrupting the naturalistic flow. Overwhelmed not only by the typical upheavals of graduating from high school, but also by the specifically amoral nature of adulthood in Thailand and by the shameful compromises he’s forced to make, Arnold confronts the idea that his self-actualization might well be achieved at the expense of a sense of solidarity and belonging.
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