Syndromes and a Century (2006)

Sang sattawat, Thailand / France / Austria, 105 minutes

Director/writer: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Photography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom

Music: Kantee Anantagant

Editor: Lee Chatametikool

Cast: Nantarat Sawaddikul, Jaruchai Iamaram, Arkanae Cherkam, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Jenjira Pongpas, Nu Nimsomboon, Sin Kaewpakpin

As a class, film critics seem inclined to line up and laud the movies of Thai director and writer Apichatpong Weerasethakul—this is the fourth of his pictures I’ve had occasion to write about by way of surveying the critical roundups at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? (TSPDT). Weerasethakul is a little bit Lynchy and a whole bunch Kubricky and don’t forget Antonioni. He likes to look at things. He’s Western in many ways and Asian in many others—practical, humorous, spiritual, inscrutable. Mostly his movies are quite beautiful—credit to cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Weerasethakul’s long-time collaborator—mostly they are slow, and mostly they are baffling. Syndromes and a Century, for example, appears to crack in half at the midpoint and go some other direction from the first half.

But it’s not really exactly so. Reading a synopsis helped me clarify that it’s more like a restart at the halfway point and pursuing other directions. It’s more a kind of memoir piece for Weerasethakul, presenting fragments of the lives of his parents, who were both doctors, amid sensory memories of his childhood. This simple explanation more or less put everything in order for me and, where I had been dreading looking at it again (I couldn’t make much of it the first time several years ago), I found it much more palatable and enjoyable this time. (Later I found that I might be entirely mistaken about what I saw.) Weerasethakul’s approach to narrative remains eccentric and opaque but that is offset somewhat by his pervasive, gentle humor. The result was one of my best times with his stuff.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

Loong Boonmee raleuk chat, Thailand / UK / France / Germany / Spain / Netherlands, 114 minutes
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Writers: Phra Sripariyattiweti, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Photography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Music: Penguin Villa
Editor: Lee Chatametikool
Cast: Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Natthakarn Aphaiwonk, Geerasak Kulhong

It's official. According to the rankings of 21st-century films at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, the critics (generic plural) are kookoo for the baffling Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. They just can't agree on which of his movies they like best. Tropical Malady remains the perennial and/or aggregated consensus favorite, presently at #9, its highest position ever. Blissfully Yours, an earlier picture, has followed a more erratic path, entering the list some years ago in the mid-200s, falling off it entirely for a year, and then spiking to the top 20 for a few years before drifting down. Last year it went from #23 to #71.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives not only has the best title but was also the first movie I happened to see by Weerasethakul, and maybe for that reason it's my favorite. As much as I can say I have a favorite. Certainly the first thing you see from such a strange sensibility is often the one that sticks with you hardest (looking at you, Eraserhead). The best parts of Uncle Boonmee are funny, spooky, beautiful, and startlingly matter-of-fact about the loopy spirituality (recalling that "loopy," like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder). Its nighttime jungle scenes are gorgeous, shadowy, confounding, pad-footed, eerie—for many scenes, even sitting in a theater, you have to let your eyes adjust to the day for night filter to make out the cryptic images, shapes, and movements. The critics have kept it solidly in the top 40 on the list since shortly after its release, and last year it moved from #38 to #18. I like it, so I'm happy for its good fortunes this way, but these movies by Weerasethakul are not easy.

Blissfully Yours (2002)

Sud sanaeha, Thailand / France, 125 minutes
Director/writer: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Photography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Editor: Lee Chatametikool
Cast: Kanokporn Tongaram, Min Oo, Jenjira Pongpas, Sa-gnad Chaiyapan, Kanitpat Premkij, Jaruwan Techasatiern

Blissfully Yours is a labor of love on numerous levels, a low budget project with all hands pitching in. Even members of the cast were helping out behind the camera. It has the feeling of something carefully tended and worried over—the shots, the camera movements, the nuances of performance. At the same time, the story (such as it is) is focused on abstracts, on love, and on life, which this movie seems to assert is love's extension. Most of the movies I've seen by director and writer Apichatpong Weerasethakul tend to operate this way (Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), focused on the invisible, the ineffable, the just beyond, moving with dreamy, intuitive, pastoral rhythms, an incidental penetrating sense for pop music sweetening, and gorgeous outdoors settings from deep inside disappearing Thai forests.

It's only Weerasethakul's second feature but already he is starting to play with the discontinuous two-act structure he often favors. It covers the events of a day shared by three people: Min, a young Burmese man who is in Thailand illegally, Roong, his temporary girlfriend who works in a factory, and Orn, a woman nearing 40 whose relation to them is not clear—something to do with Min's employment. It starts in a doctor's office, where Min's skin rash is being examined and treated. Roong speaks sharply to the doctor about the treatment plan, and the doctor speaks just as sharply back. Roong and Orn claim Min can't speak, but actually he doesn't want to give away his accent. Orn tries to get the doctor to sign a certificate that will enable Min to get a job, but the doctor refuses until she has seen his legal identification papers.

Tropical Malady (2004)

Sud pralad, Thailand / France / Germany / Italy, 118 minutes
Director/writer: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Photography: Jarin Pengpanitch, Vichit Tanapanitch, Jean-Louis Vialard
Music: Smallroom
Editors: Lee Chatametikool, Jacopo Quadri
Cast: Banlop Lomnoi, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Huai Dessom, Sirivech Jareonchon, Udom Promma

Tropical Malady yokes two unrelated stories into coequal halves so formally that it almost feels like an anthology. The second story even gets what appears to be a title ("A Spirit's Path"). Yet there are mysterious affinities between the two halves. Both involve soldiers and share the two acting leads (who look very different across the stories), both revolve around investigations by the military of unexplained deaths of villagers and livestock. Director and writer Apichatpong Weerasethakul is notably a comer on the list of 21st-century films at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, splitting votes by the evidence, with Tropical Malady presently at #12 and, behind it, Blissfully Yours at #15, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives at #36, and Syndromes and a Century at #45.

Weerasethakul is Thai and might as well be approached as something of an Asian David Lynch. It's an easy comparison. He's weird enough and his sources feel deep enough. Weerasethakul's fundamental preoccupation are with the spirit world, though his appreciation for the beauties of the carnal, physical plane are undeniable. If nothing else—and sometimes I think it's not much more—Tropical Malady is extraordinarily beautiful, capturing the luminous qualities of life and its visible surfaces: the glowing green of the jungle, the evocative faces of animals and humans, the way light plays in darkness. It is also glancingly good with the tender dances of falling in love, raising a family, working, being alive and human. You won't know what you saw, I can guarantee that much, but you might want to keep looking. Tropical Malady nags with an air of muted yet repellent fascination, like a person of inscrutable beauty used to being stared at. Think of it maybe as externalized meditation.