Time Out of Body, Time Out of Mind
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at the Harris Theater
If summer nights are the drone of summer bugs - a steady background murmur that you used as a reference point when someone told you about summers by the sea - then this is a movie you'll recognize. Or you might remember your teenage years, when summer nights began so late because they always began after dark. You learned the landscape of old neighborhoods by moonlight and streetlights, and recognized homes and yards for the shaded spaces and quiet corners that dissolved into ordinary lawns by day. The world was not prettiest at sunrise or dusk, but at full dark, without the sun, except of course in the residual heat off the pavement that the sun left behind.
Uncle Boonmee begins at that familiar hour, and does not wind away so much as disperse. It is playful but gentle, with a sense of humor and great warmth. There are cave paintings and ghosts, mysteries and moments of perfect clarity. Apichatpong Weerasethakul traffics in spirits, and I tell myself that the appearance of something from beyond the veil will not convince me the way an effect in a movie should. But I am always convinced, in Tropical Malady or here. The ghost that sits down to dinner at the table of Uncle Boonmee reminds me of Cocteau's bête in the electric lamplight of rural Thailand. When he returns, in a future narrative that also steps back from the fictional nature of the film, the spirit is a man in a monkey suit - no more - surrounded by teenage boys dressed like soldiers, laughing at hijinks on the set.
The present contains the past, in structures and memory; the man in the t-shirt was once a monk, the ghost at the table - a second ghost, in human form - was a wife. Ghosts wander, but inevitably miss the living. They do not miss the physical world, but they belong to it as much as the wind, the river, the honeycombs, or the stray dog. Weerasethakul wears his cinematic influences on his sleeve, but like visiting relatives or congregating shades, they do not announce themselves so much as move along well-worn paths. Thus, a patch of sun or a plate of food hot from the front burner recalls the appearance of Paris reflected in a door in a movie by Jacques Tati. The woman at the table with a bug zapper reminds me of my grandmother, the lamp on her back porch, and June. There is nothing like the movies for bringing it home.
directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at the Harris Theater
If summer nights are the drone of summer bugs - a steady background murmur that you used as a reference point when someone told you about summers by the sea - then this is a movie you'll recognize. Or you might remember your teenage years, when summer nights began so late because they always began after dark. You learned the landscape of old neighborhoods by moonlight and streetlights, and recognized homes and yards for the shaded spaces and quiet corners that dissolved into ordinary lawns by day. The world was not prettiest at sunrise or dusk, but at full dark, without the sun, except of course in the residual heat off the pavement that the sun left behind.
Uncle Boonmee begins at that familiar hour, and does not wind away so much as disperse. It is playful but gentle, with a sense of humor and great warmth. There are cave paintings and ghosts, mysteries and moments of perfect clarity. Apichatpong Weerasethakul traffics in spirits, and I tell myself that the appearance of something from beyond the veil will not convince me the way an effect in a movie should. But I am always convinced, in Tropical Malady or here. The ghost that sits down to dinner at the table of Uncle Boonmee reminds me of Cocteau's bête in the electric lamplight of rural Thailand. When he returns, in a future narrative that also steps back from the fictional nature of the film, the spirit is a man in a monkey suit - no more - surrounded by teenage boys dressed like soldiers, laughing at hijinks on the set.
The present contains the past, in structures and memory; the man in the t-shirt was once a monk, the ghost at the table - a second ghost, in human form - was a wife. Ghosts wander, but inevitably miss the living. They do not miss the physical world, but they belong to it as much as the wind, the river, the honeycombs, or the stray dog. Weerasethakul wears his cinematic influences on his sleeve, but like visiting relatives or congregating shades, they do not announce themselves so much as move along well-worn paths. Thus, a patch of sun or a plate of food hot from the front burner recalls the appearance of Paris reflected in a door in a movie by Jacques Tati. The woman at the table with a bug zapper reminds me of my grandmother, the lamp on her back porch, and June. There is nothing like the movies for bringing it home.
posted by NPK at 7:43 PM
<< Home