The Magic Forest
Tropical Malady (2004)
directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
When I wrote about Syndromes and a Century, I used "mystical" to mean an intuitive understanding of existence, one that arrives at comprehension - and the wonder of it - by small alterations in the broadest shared experiences. Andrei Tarkovsky made terror a part of this, in the sense of the deep fear of a sudden awakening late at night that the mind almost instantly tries to conceal in everyday worries about death or meaning. There is a calm at the center of Tarkovsky's films because terror is not manipulated for effect; we witness the director's inquiries, participate in them, and respond instinctively - which is always, first, in awe. The closest I have come to a religious experience in art (as opposed to people) is in those Russian films. They are lonely, though.
Not here. Weerasethakul loves myth, and roots through his fictions to infer from his world of oral traditions what makes fairy tales inseparable from love stories. His romances are characterized most by common, recognizable happiness. The transformation from mundane to eternal is the hours of two people's courtship: the rooms, vacation spots, and cafes that attain legend in memory. He picks actors with interesting smiles, and lets them. The myths return as soon as we are ready to follow them back into the woods.
directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
When I wrote about Syndromes and a Century, I used "mystical" to mean an intuitive understanding of existence, one that arrives at comprehension - and the wonder of it - by small alterations in the broadest shared experiences. Andrei Tarkovsky made terror a part of this, in the sense of the deep fear of a sudden awakening late at night that the mind almost instantly tries to conceal in everyday worries about death or meaning. There is a calm at the center of Tarkovsky's films because terror is not manipulated for effect; we witness the director's inquiries, participate in them, and respond instinctively - which is always, first, in awe. The closest I have come to a religious experience in art (as opposed to people) is in those Russian films. They are lonely, though.
Not here. Weerasethakul loves myth, and roots through his fictions to infer from his world of oral traditions what makes fairy tales inseparable from love stories. His romances are characterized most by common, recognizable happiness. The transformation from mundane to eternal is the hours of two people's courtship: the rooms, vacation spots, and cafes that attain legend in memory. He picks actors with interesting smiles, and lets them. The myths return as soon as we are ready to follow them back into the woods.
posted by NPK at 1:26 PM
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