The films of celebrated Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul have always possessed a hypnotic quality, capable of transforming banal sights and sounds into lingering moments of intense, often surrealistic loveliness. However, it wasn’t until his Palme d’Or-winning 2010 feature Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives that Weerasethakul seemed to discover the tales and themes that fit his eccentric aesthetic. Fortunately, that harmony is also evident in his superlative new feature, Cemetery of Splendour.
Even a relatively story-inclined Weerasethakul film like Cemetery is still an unhurried, meandering affair, full of curious tangents and bizarre meditative interludes. Broadly, the film focuses on an older middle-aged woman, Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas), who volunteers at a rural hospital that was formerly an elementary school. The patients at this infirmary are soldiers afflicted with an odd sleeping sickness, one that can thrust them in and out of coma seemingly at random. Inasmuch as Cemetery possesses a narrative, it concerns Jenjira’s gentle, emergent friendship with a particular patient, Itt (Banlop Lonmoi), as well as her oftentimes befuddled interactions with the spirit world, particularly those mediated by a local psychic (Jarinpattra Rueangram).
Like Uncle Boonmee, Weerasethakul’s latest film is preoccupied with the mysteries of time’s passage, especially the ways that the passions of the dead reverberate in the present day. Compared to the director’s other work, its magical realism is strikingly seamless: Nothing truly inexplicable happens on camera, and yet every inch of the film seems suffused with a heady concoction of prosaic detail and mystical energy. (A favorite moment: When two immortal princesses from a shrine reveal themselves, a thunderstruck Jenjira regards them for a beat….and then reaches distractedly for a snack of langsat fruit.) Enigmatic and yet profound, Cemetery of Splendour embodies cinema-as-experience, inviting the viewer to enter the filmmaker’s peculiar world and inhale deeply.
Cemetery of Splendour screens November 14 at 9:15 p.m. and November 15 at 6:50 p.m. Both screenings are at the Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema. For tickets or additional information, visit the Cinema St. Louis website.
Full Disclosure: Andrew Wyatt is serving as a juror for the New Filmmakers Forum's (NFF) Emerging Director Award at the Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival.
