Syndromes and a Century (2006)

All of the films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul I've seen have been absolutely brilliant, characterized by an unusual unruly approach to the logic of cinema. Syndromes and a Century is no exception. As always, it's quite a challenge to even describe what the film is about. Weerasethakul's films defy the idea that a film should move from A to B in a steady, intelligible progression in which the viewer should be able to pick out the main dramatical turning points. Syndromes and a Century, or his other films (the ones I've seen) aren't like that. Traditional narratives are almost entirely eschewed, even though he usually still manages to provide surprisingly touching moments of interpersonal encounters (which you might not expect from the description "experimental film"). The films' movement consists of leaps, and it is often not that clear where the leaps take us and what they mean.

In the first section of Syndromes and a Century, the setting is rural Thailand and the main characters comprise a few people working in or visiting a hospital. There are love problems, a medical check-up and some rather odd, but still strangely everyday, conversations, some of which takes place between a monk and a dentist. Then we see the same, or almost the same, scenes played out in other settings, in a future time, or alternative time. One may want to see the film as rooted in a Buddhist tangle of concepts and such concepts also appear in the story itself. But when those themes are taken up explicitly it takes place between people who relates to them in various ways.

In the middle of these conversations and repetitions there are raptures and even more elusive scenes. In one of them, the camera whirls around a steamy hospital boiler room. The camera gravitates towards an open pipe, and lingers there for many minutes while a score of monotonous noise music churns and churns. It's a marvelous scene, even though I have almost no clue what is going on. In this latter section of the film I cannot help thinking about Kubrick. The camera has an icy, Kubrickian feel - and meticulous visual composition - in its evocative exploration of the white, eerie hospital. Even though this film doesn't stop overwhelming me, I constantly have a very hard time pinpointing what atmosphere the scenes exude; this film induces a multitude of feelings and there is no safe pattern at all to fall back on. Weerasethakul's penchant for playfulness doesn't at all end up self-indulgent: rather, I get the impression of a director who is endlessly interested in the strangeness of the surrounding world and the mysterious ways in which we humans move about. If it is something that his movies do exude, it is wonder.

Syndromes and a Century is said to be based on the director's own life, along with his parents' recollection of the past. And well, if you think about it as a film about memories, a more open-ended and mesmerizing account of what memories are is offered than most other films, working with an impoverished set of "flashbacks", succeed in doing: here, memory is connected with meditation, longing, dream, fantasy and utopia/dystopia. The idea, so fondly embraced by most movies, about a steady and self-evident "now" is completely disrupted. The fine thing about the very end of the film is that I still have no idea where the film is, where it has taken us, even though I do get a very specific sense of place.

Uncle Bonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

I must confess I don't have much of a clue about what Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is about. Mortality, yes, but in what way? Apichatpong Weerasethakul's approach to storytelling is idiosyncratic to say the least. Linearity and the quotidian - or even the extra-ordinary! - is not his thing. He invites us into a story about ghosts and people and places. The ghosts never surprise anyone in the movie. They appear, and become a part of life. I've seen one other film by Weerasethakul, and I was thrilled - Uncle Boonmee made me even more convinced that this is a director with his very personal contribution to how to make a film. In fact, this film turned out to be a magnificently eerie and beautiful piece on how we live together. Depicting what is the center or the angle of the film immediately reveals how one understands it. Let's say we are introduced to Uncle Boonmee, a dying man. He lives in a rural area and members of the family along with a nurse take care of him. When these people gather for dinner, they are joined by other family members who appear from the shadows of the jungle. One of them is Boonmee's wife. Nothing of this is silly, or scary. (And don't expect it to be fluffy magical realism: here's a film that suddenly turns political, dealing with xenophobia and Thailand's bloody history.) The film shifts gears several times, and throw us into completely other forms of lives, but I sense Uncle Boonmee is always present in some form or other, as a catfish perhaps. The end of the film is a mix of Kim Ki-Duk and David Lynch - the thing is just that it keeps us close to what somehow still is everyday life. These are elusive scenes, and I am not able to talk about them here. The cinematography of Uncle Boonmee is breathtaking - if you are one of those who have problems with Terrence Malick, but think that there is some potentiality there, you should watch how Weerasethakul immerses the camera in the flows of nature. This director's film all reflect a mix of playfulness and tenderness I rarely see in other films.

Tropical Malady (2004)

For several years now, I've been hearing about Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Tropical Malady being the first film I've seen by him, I must confess I am thrilled to watch a few more. It is a kind of film with a style completely of its own. The first part consists of a loosely developed love story between a soldier and a country boy. They flirt, hang out in town, go to a lush music show, cuddle on a verande and talk to a lady who switches between stories about ghosts and stories about "Who wants to be a millioner". Realistic seens are mixed with dreamier ones. Some of it reminds me of the tenderness of Wong Kar Wai. The city is bustling and the countryside is alive with buzzing sounds and it is almost as we could feel the different smells of grass and food. In the second part of the film, we see the soldier hunting a tiger. The tiger is a spirit and the spirit has to be released. The spirit is his boyfriend. For almost an hour, we see mostly quiet scenes of this strange journey through the jungle, the drama between tiger and man, man and spirit, undulating and moving in surprising directions. Could I really tell what is going on? Even though many things remain elusive to me, I am not troubled by it. This is a painfully beautiful film about love and vulnerability (does Weerasethakul say: the vulnerability of love is a form of power? I hope not.). In the first scene of the film, we see soldiers standing in front of a camera. Suddenly we realize that what this photo shoot includes is - a corpse on the ground. Several scenes are like this. Things happen that change our perception of what is going on. We have to re-focus, re-orient, rub our eyes and our minds. It is a film that does not settle for linear storytelling but this does not mean that I as a viewer exert lonely acts of imagination. Just as one character haunts the other, this film will haunt me.  

The Last Life in the Universe (2003)

I had read some reviews of Pen-Ek Ratanuang's films & decided I should grab the opportunity to go see a screening of The Last Life in the Universe in MoMa. To be honest, I didn't like the film very much, even though several scenes were executed in a funny and eerie way. I cannot stop thinking that the style of the film is very self-conscious. Even though the director tries not to be too explicit, I find the images lacking in depth. I also find the musical score oppresingly predictable in combination with the clinical frames. Yes, the camera sometimes moves in interesting, surprising ways when we do not really expect any movement, but this does not change my impression that the film is too much an effort to be stylish, to be aesthetic. As if this were not enough, the humor in the film was, in my opinion, obtuse. Or maybe it was a creepy guy guffawing in the right and wrong places, always too loudly, that made me think so. Well, maybe I just don't think it is very funny to see somebody trying to hang himself and oops, the doorbell rings, gotta open. The story, dealing with the way people get close to each other in ways over which they have no control, has its merit. A Japanese librarian living in a spotless apartment in Bangkok tries to kill himself. Once, a few more times. His yazuka brother comes to visit and ... there will be blood. Between the suicide attempts, the librarian spots a beautiful girl reading a Japanese children's book. As he is getting ready to jump off a bridge, the beautiful girl spots him. She moves towards him, only to be hit by a car. The girl dies, and that is when the librarian meets her sister. This is only a part of the story, but it is this, rather than the scenes depicting violence, that drives the film. These two people have no common language. They speak what they can: the Japanese man knows a few words in Thai, the girl is learning Japanese. Mostly, they speak broken English. As atrocities have taken place in the guy's apartment, he ends up staying with the girl in her ramshackle residence by the sea. They are friends, perhaps something more. The film treads carefully in revealing the sexual tension between the two. Sometimes this is done elegantly, sometimes not. At times I feel that communication difficulties are handled too carelessly, by the film's piling one difficulty on top of another. It is good to see that the film is also politically conscious and only at rare moments does it fall prey to gender stereotypes. This is a film worth seeing, the cinematography is stunning at times, but for me, it was too aestheticized.