Courtesy of Strand Releasing
Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul—call him Joe—has four feature-length films to his credit. He's quickly gaining critical cred, but very slowly developing a popular following. His films are an acquired taste, asking viewers to relinquish many of the standard expectations they bring to a theater, in a very different way than j-horror or Chinese epic action films have done in recent decades. Not strictly narrative or non-, Apichatpong’s films intersperse narrative fragments with naturalistic images and extended set pieces.
Apichatpong isn’t alone in his filmic tendencies. New York Times critic Dave Kehr has characterized a growing cinematic movement marked by ambiguous narratives, unprofessional actors, a mixture of fictional and documentary material, and studied long shots that draw attention to a character’s interaction with environs—real and otherwise. Apichatpong himself discusses his films as taking a last stand against the superficiality of contemporary cinema, a personal cinema freed from a logic of narrative that the awarding of the Palme d’Or may go a long way toward vindicating. His latest, Uncle Boonmee Who Who Can Recall His Past Lives, requires viewers to check narrative and interpretive expectations at the door lest they leave the theater frustrated by what the film wasn’t rather than enthralled by what it was.
The film revolves around a man named Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) who is dying of kidney disease, and has traveled to the jungles of northern Thailand—the site, he believes, of his past lives—for his final days. We never know him, in any conventional sense, but instead know his transition from life to death, learning that it isn’t much of a transition after all.
"Past lives," is a bit of a mischaracterization, as his lives seem more parallel than past. Sharing dinner with his nurse (Jenjira Pongpas) and young nephew (Sakda Kaewbuadee), he is joined by slowly materializing his dead wife (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk), who is offered water and polite inquires as to her well being by the others. They next greet Boonmee’s long-absent son (Geerasak Kulhong) who disappeared long ago to join with a Monkey Ghost; here, he is clumsily costumed, as Apichatpong refuses our comfortable, pre-formed narratives about reincarnation and spirit worlds. Boonmee’s loved ones, already a few steps ahead in their journeys, help him make his own.
In the film’s most daring depiction, Boonmee recalls (sort of) his past embodiment as a catfish entangled with a disfigured princess, who rejects her handsome suitors in his favor. Since the husband and wife have always been together, even in that incarnation their relationship is an inspired and passionate one, filmed to evoke a classic period piece that makes their copulation almost expected. Almost.
In his final journey, Uncle Boonmme takes the group through a haunting cave, marked by shimmering crystals and blind fish, preparing himself for his transformation, but into what he doesn’t know. Everyone in the film experiences some sort of transformation, shedding skin—literal, metaphoric, ideological—to become something other than, yet still the same.
Uncle Boonmee is shot on Super 16, and each of the film's reels takes up a different filmic tradition: documentary, costume drama, even his own previous movies. “More than my other films, Uncle Boonmee is very much about cinema, that’s also why it’s personal," Weerasethakul says. "If you care to look, each reel of the film has a different style—acting style, lighting style, or cinematic references—but most of them reflect movies.” (Weerasethakul describes his filmmaking steps in a CinemaScope interview here).
While there’s a tendency among some reviews (like this one) to want to prepare viewers for Apichatpong’s films, to warn them about the dense layers, dream logic, and parallel planes, we could as easily promote them as the beautiful rides that they are, filled with exciting, unique visuals and mind-jarring juxtapositions that offer the best of the medium. And his films might be better served by our doing so.
