Saffron-Colored Robes
Syndromes and a Century (2006)
directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
I always talk about the time of year with the movies I watch in winter, and it's easy to see how the early dark of January imposes, simultaneously, both stasis and a long, sustained inspiration (a month of silent films, say). I think of it as accompaniment to the season - hand in hand together through the short day - and as conducive to good movie watching as Jaws in late July twilight. Shortly before Syndromes and a Century arrived from Netflix, I saw a screen capture of the title - in Thai and English - from the movie's opening credits:
Not simply a tropical diversion from the pre-dawn cold of my walks with Boone, the image suggested less to me the heat and humidity of Thailand (though characters in Thai script are nicely suited to that, no?) than the prospect of a movie in the morning, over coffee as the sun rises. I used to watch movies on weekend mornings more often than I do now; the worry is that one needs dark to sustain an interest in a film for two hours - that during the day you have new energy and things to do, and it's easy to stop and go do them. Sometimes you go, but sometimes the mood of a film is synonymous with the second cup of coffee on days when you have time to drink two.
So attuned to environment is Apichatpong that his characters are always mopping their brows, seeking shade when they are out of doors, turning their faces to light breezes, and making themselves tea in long pours from big Thermoses. People's reactions to the climate are never the point (mopping her brow is just something the woman does while she speaks), but it makes a good case for Apichatpong's awareness, which is integral to following him to his eventual, vague destinations. When a trickle of sweat traced Daniel Day-Lewis's face in an otherwise temperate scene in There Will Be Blood, I thought not of the movie I was watching (nor its own reality), but of the overwhelming conditions of shooting in Marfa, Texas, in afternoons with a heat index of 110 degrees.
I frequently yearn for the places I see in movies, but I would almost never say I "travel" with film. During Syndromes and a Century, I felt as if I could press pause and walk outside into Thailand. So watching becomes transformative, and the lesser clues - an odd legend here, an eclipse there, the circular nature of time - reveal in Apichatpong that rarest of filmmakers, the mystic. I imagine that the quiet of a ride in a hot air balloon is something similar, as the colors in the globe above you bleed out into the wider country below.
directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
I always talk about the time of year with the movies I watch in winter, and it's easy to see how the early dark of January imposes, simultaneously, both stasis and a long, sustained inspiration (a month of silent films, say). I think of it as accompaniment to the season - hand in hand together through the short day - and as conducive to good movie watching as Jaws in late July twilight. Shortly before Syndromes and a Century arrived from Netflix, I saw a screen capture of the title - in Thai and English - from the movie's opening credits:
Not simply a tropical diversion from the pre-dawn cold of my walks with Boone, the image suggested less to me the heat and humidity of Thailand (though characters in Thai script are nicely suited to that, no?) than the prospect of a movie in the morning, over coffee as the sun rises. I used to watch movies on weekend mornings more often than I do now; the worry is that one needs dark to sustain an interest in a film for two hours - that during the day you have new energy and things to do, and it's easy to stop and go do them. Sometimes you go, but sometimes the mood of a film is synonymous with the second cup of coffee on days when you have time to drink two.
So attuned to environment is Apichatpong that his characters are always mopping their brows, seeking shade when they are out of doors, turning their faces to light breezes, and making themselves tea in long pours from big Thermoses. People's reactions to the climate are never the point (mopping her brow is just something the woman does while she speaks), but it makes a good case for Apichatpong's awareness, which is integral to following him to his eventual, vague destinations. When a trickle of sweat traced Daniel Day-Lewis's face in an otherwise temperate scene in There Will Be Blood, I thought not of the movie I was watching (nor its own reality), but of the overwhelming conditions of shooting in Marfa, Texas, in afternoons with a heat index of 110 degrees.
I frequently yearn for the places I see in movies, but I would almost never say I "travel" with film. During Syndromes and a Century, I felt as if I could press pause and walk outside into Thailand. So watching becomes transformative, and the lesser clues - an odd legend here, an eclipse there, the circular nature of time - reveal in Apichatpong that rarest of filmmakers, the mystic. I imagine that the quiet of a ride in a hot air balloon is something similar, as the colors in the globe above you bleed out into the wider country below.
posted by NPK at 12:04 PM
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