Languid, borderline static “Uncle Boonmee”

I have seen most but not  all the films that have won top honors at the Cannes Film Festival (the golden palm). I am dubious about some that I have seen (e.g., Barton Fink, Wild at Heart) and actively disliked “Tree of the Wooden Clogs” and “The White Ribbon,” but of the 54 I have seen, the most boring, most inept, and worst is the 2010 winner, “Lung Bunmi Raluek Chat” (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), a Thai movie directed by Apichatpong “Joe”* Weerasethakul. The no-budget first Weerasethakul feature, “Mysterious Object at Noon” (Dokfa nai meuman, 2000) tried my patience and the camera bouncing along in a van nearly made me nauseous, but some of the Thai people interviewed had interesting things to say.

The 2002 “Blissfully yours” (Sud sanaeha) seemed enervated and also made me queasy with seemingly endless shots of a rash on the back of a Burmese regufee/immigrant in Thailand. The movie won the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

“Tropical Malady” (Sud pralad, 2004) consisted of two stories, though both are so opaquely presented “story” might not be an appropriate descriptor. I liked the first one with a homosexual encounter in the forest, and there were some arresting shots in the second one in which a soldier meets a tiger (shaman) in the forest. (Both involve the same two actors.) Though many in the Cannes audience walked out and others booed it, “Tropical Malady” won the Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Though also including some seemingly pointless and lengthy forest scenes, “Syndromes and a Century” (Sang sattawat, 2006) seemed to me to show significant development in the film-maker. It was also split into two stories, this time both involving the same pair (this time male and female) in Thai rural hospitals 40 years apart. It did not play Cannes. It was in competition at the Venice Film Festival, but Venice jurors apparently do not share the euphoric enthusiasm for Weerasethakul movies that Cannes ones do. Weerasethakul refused to make the cuts demanded by Thai censors, and the ban in Thailand became a major brouhaha there.

Which brings us up to “Uncle Boonmee: Who Can Recall His Past Lives.” The movie that I find not languid but numbing was greeted with critical praise in America as well as the Cannes top prize. I have no explanation for this. The movie does not provide the sort of puzzle that “Last Year at Marienbad” or “Blow-Up” did. There are a series of long and static shots (plus one handheld camera going into a dark cave that is jumpy in the “Mysterious Object at Noon” tradition) in which the dead come back to chat with Boonmee, whose kidneys are failing. (He is cared for by a Laotian who has crossed the Mekong illegally, should anyone be interested.)

Since one of these is his wife, the woman I first took to be his wife must be a sister or sister-in-law (she is counting the take after the funeral in the last part in a hotel room with her daughter and a stray Buddhist monk who wants to shower, but whose room does not have warm water…). The most ludicrous is a son in dime-story Wolfman suit with red lights for eyes. There is also a never seen water sprite who talks to the woman (at great length from a pool in which she gradually enters and floats).

I have read reviewers who claim the movie illuminates Thai(/Buddhist) belief in reincarnation, but I did not register any reincarnations. There are ghosts, one of whom says that ghosts attach to a person rather than a place. Boonmee feels guilty about all the communists he killed earlier in his life. Boonmee goes into the forest just before dying, but I think he will turn into a ghost, not immediately be reincarnated there or anywhere else. In addition to the ghosts and Ed Wood-level special effects, the movie also includes intimations of sex with a catfish, a princess in quest for eternal youth, a long look in the near dark at a water buffalo in a forest stream, characters splitting in half (so they can continue to watch tv and go out to eat), and the monk’s undressing, showering, and dressing (discreetly filmed above the waist, btw). If I have made the movie sound interesting, please believe me that I found it tedious and amateurish (“Ed Wood-level special effects” is not a compliment!)

I also fail to see a “meditation on the afterlife” (my local newspaper critic claimed the movie was that), though there is a discussion with one of the ghosts (in which she says heaven is very boring as well as the ghosts haunting individuals not being attached to a place). I am interested in Thai culture and have traveled through much of the country (as well as being a veteran of slow and opaque scenes in Weerasethakul movies!).

* Weerasethakul studied (Andy Warhol’s “Sleep” perhaps) at the Chicago Art Institute, hence the “Joe.” The DVD has many bonus features including his talking about the movie. I doubt that this would convince me that “Uncle Boonmee” is great and profound, though bonus features often increase my appreciation and valuation of movies.

 

©2011, Stephen O. Murray

“Syndromes and a Century”

I have only seen seven or eight Thai movies. The four that I like least have all been made by writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the only Thai film-maker to garner international art-house attention. Like Taiwanese directors Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-Liang (and to a degree Hong Kong director Wong Kar-War). I suspect masochism as at least part of the explanation for the favor he has found with critics.

“Mysterious Object at Noon”  (Dokfa nai meuman, 2000) is very opaque; I’m not sure anything happens in it. “Tropical Malady (Sud pralad, 2004) is mystifying: something happens in each of its two halves, but I’m not sure what. “Syndromes and a Century” (Sang sattawat, 2006) makes some sense. There are some menacing shots of movement through the forest and clouds massing in “Blissfully Yours,” but I’m quite sure that little happens (except for some sex). Little happens at a very leisurely pace — a pace that makes snails seem like speed demons.

The prolonged opening scene of a medical consultation with a female Western-medicine physcian looks ahead to “Syndrome,” which focuses on the director’s physician parents. Roong (Kanokporn Tongaram) and Orn (Jenjira Jansuda) have brought Min (Min Oo) in. He is suffering from a rash. The two women answer the doctor’s questions to him. The younger (Roong) explains that they ran out of the lotion the docor prescribed and show the one she has been rubbing into his irritated skin, which the doctor says has exacerbated the problem.

After Roong leaves to go to work, the older woman (Orn) wheedles for a health certificate for Min. The doctor refuses to provide one — not because Min is too sick to be certified, but because she cannot issue one without some official identification.

Plot spoiler alert (even though there is practically no plot!

Later, the viewer realizes that Min is not a native speaker of Thai. Although the movie is shot in Weerasethakul’s native northeast (Khon Kaen, in Issan) (and indeed the medical office in the first part is one of his parent’s), Min is an ethnic Karen from Burma (which is west of Thailand). Roong is teaching him to read and write Thai and I cannot tell if he has an accent that would give away his alienness. Roong is paying Orn to get papers for Min, but Min is fired from his job some time around the rolling of the opening credits (nearly 45 minutes into the movie).

Roong drives and drives and drives some more. Some of the time, she rubs lotion into Min’s arm and her own. After what seems an interminable drive, the car moves from paved to unpaved road (but seemingly at the same speed). The lovers set out for their picnic. Min removes his shirt and pants — though I would think that his skin condition would not be helped by contact with leaves and branches in the forest.

Somewhat surprisingly, he knows the way to a scenic overlook. The picnic spread is invaded by red ants. One (only one!) bites Roong.

Cut to a brown male rear humping (and humping and humping — nothing occurs quickly in this movie!). Finally the male finishes and it turns out not to be Min and Roong, but Orn and some never named man. Seemingly this man’s motorcycle is then stolen and instead of walking back on the road, Orn thrashes through the brush.

She spots a surgical mask on the ground. Personally, I would not pick one up if I saw one on the forest floor. And I most certainly would not put it on as she does!

Movie logic is not entirely abandoned, and instead of getting hopelessly lost (or dying from toxins rubbed on the surgical mask or ye olde jungle rot), she finds Min and Roong on a rock at the edge of a shallow river. Roong has just finished fellating Min (at least I think so: it is shot from behind Min and the only sound is flowing water). The fully dressed Roong coaxes the fully dressed Orn into the stream. They cavort and then hold up Min, while rubbing lotion onto his chest (the container is balanced on his belly).

Eventually, they get out of the water. Roong wrings out her wet clothes and places them (in the shade…) to dry and puts on Min’s pants. Orn throws all the picnic good and containers in the stream an lies, steals a cigarette (and money?) and lies on the picnic cloth.

Roong extracts Min’s erect penis from his boxer shorts and fondles it for a while. (This time there is no guesswork/interpretation necessary: it is shot in closeup of her hand and his crotch.) Surely this was censored in Thailand. (“Syndromes and a Century” was never returned from the censorship board though it has no sex and no violence in it.)

The movie ends with a prolonged shot of Min’s right nipple and open armpit and part of Roong’s head not quite touching him.

End of plot spoiler alert (if you didn’t skip it, did you find any plot?)

 

Driving through a Thai town and out through the countryside has some interest, and the substitution of remedies by the patients has some humor — and Min Oo has a very smooth penis when it is extracted and displayed. The American DVD version is sixteen minutes shorter than the Thai theatrical release. I greatly doubt that there is a story that landed on the cutting room floor, and am fairly confident that the Thai verison was even more languid.

There is no music for the thrashing through the forest scenes (or the sex scenes, for that matter). For me, there is not nearly enough there there to merit spending 109 minutes watching. The time spent with Min and the two women trying to help him was not bliss to me. Apichatpong Weerasethakul (who earned an MFA at the Chicago Institute of Art) has no interest in entertaining audiences, but also provides practically nothing to stimulate thinking about the setting or situation(s) of the undeveloped characters.

It’s art? Well, it’s “artsy” in the most pejorative sense (pretentious nonsense). It is not ‘artsy” in having beautiful compositions. The compositions and characters and (mumbled) dialog are undistinguished. Occasionally, there are segments of Min’s journal superimposed on the scenes in which nothing is happening, but there is nothing of particular insight in what he writes either!

Neither of the women seem to derive any satisfaction from any of the three sex scenes, though Min also does nothing to indicate enjoyment. He blocks Roong’s first seduction and is asleep or pretending to be asleep when she extracts and hardens his penis jsut before the movie stops.

I mentioned Tsai Ming-Liang at the beginning of my review. I could riff on similarities between his languid voyeuristic portrayals of emotionally inert characters (especially, the three of “Viva l’amour”). There is always a lot of water in Tsai movies, and the last half of “Blissfully Yours” has the river in which all the named characters dip. Those who find Tsai’s films absorbing might enjoy the shots of the women here picking dead skin off Min (and the joyless sexual servicing). I didn’t.

In what is billed as an “introduction” Apichatpong Weerasethakul is engaging (but the talking head is not quite in focus). At least here, he has a story to tell: a sacred tree advising going back to Bangkok for 2 1/2 months when the rains would end.

©2008, Stephen O. Murray

 

Opaque Thai movie

I really wanted to like “Mysterious Object at Noon,” a very low-budget, 2000 experimental , black-and-white Thai film, because I am interested in Thailand, because I have seen few (3) Thai films, and because its creator (he does not think he should be credited as “director”), Apichatpong Weerasethakul is an interesting guy. Indeed, his own story, as he tells it in what is keyed as an “interview” on the DVD, is more interesting than the story of the film. Weerasethakul, who calls himself “Joe” in English, grew up in a small town in northeastern Thailand (Issan). He wanted to be a filmmaker, but studied architecture to please his parents. Then he went to film school at the Chicago Art Institute for three years.

He is interested in mixing fact and fiction and has made two sort of traveling-around-Thailand “documentaries” that are, he says, “about nothing.” (The other’s American title is “Blissfully Yours.”) He is a founder of the Bangkok-based Kick the Machine, an artist-run film production and distribution company focused on young experimental film-makers, and codirector of both the Bangkok Experimental and Short Film and Video film festivals.

The idea for the film came from a French surrealists’ game called “e

” in which one artist drew something on paper that was folded to make what he’d drawn invisible, and the next continued a line from the first, the third from the second, and so on. The game was also played by surrealist writers with either the last word or the last sentence of one contribution visible to the next contributor. “Object” begins with the view through the windshield of a vehicle driving through Bangkok with the radio tuned into some soap opera. Then there is a woman telling a standard rural-born Thai horror story of being sold by her father (for bus fare) to an “uncle” who prostituted her. Weerasethakul is not interested in her story and asks her to tell or make up the beginning of a story.

She starts to tell the story of a boy in a wheelchair and his lovely young tutor named Doghafr. Weerasethakul then has some nonactors play the part, alternating with the talking heads of those who continue the story. Weerasethakul is even less interested in psychological motivation and realist narrative than Jean-Luc Godard at his most audience-flouting 1980s movies, yet he is showing people telling stories and interested in stories.

The Thai title is “Dogfahr Ni Meu Marn” (Doghafr in the Devil’s Hand). Dogfahr is the tutor, but my only guess of what the reference to the devil’s hand might be is that it is her storytellers. I am sure that Weerasethakul told the storytellers he chose (by whatever criteria of selection he used) that there was a tutor named Dogfahr and a boy paralyzed below the waist.

The “mysterious object” of the English-language title is a ball that rolls out from Doghafr’s skirt while she is fainted (or dead) on the floor. It is an extraterrestrial being that takes on the guise of first a boy then a duplicate Dogfahr. The story gets even weirder when some schoolchildren take over and add a “witch tiger” and a magic sword.

Then there are credits…followed by nearly ten minutes centering on children playing soccer by the edge of a river. Weerasethakul is so perverse that it seems possible that the ball will not go into the river. It does (sorry if that’s a plot spoiler for you! but I’ll leave open the question of whether the soccer game turns into water polo…).

Although the primary influences (Godard and surrealists) are French, some of the arbitrariness and peculiar camera setups resonate with the often maddening procedures of postmodernist Taiwanese film-makers, especially Tsai Ming-Liang, and, most especially, “The River.” In both “Object” and “Blissfully,” a woman brings her elderly father to a female physician for a consultation that includes considerable bickering between daughter and father in front of the professional… and mysterious neck and ear ailments like those of the son in “The River.”

The medical consultation is the best part of the film; it has no discernible relationship to Doghafr or the storyline. Maybe the Devil’s Hand is responsible for the neck ailment? Weerasethakul also intercuts for no particular reason, a television interview of parents of an infant who survived a plane crash, protected by amulets that were lost in the crash…

So there are bits of Thai culture (including fish sauce refills, rebuilding spirit houses, and some working elephants), but I can’t imagine anyone learning anything about Thai culture(s) from a journey which mixes swings south of Bangkok with swings north after the initial driving within the capital city. I realize that the viewer is not supposed to know where s/he is, and that the film is intended to be “about nothing,” but, alas, the film is a journey I cannot recommend, though fans of “Mulholland Drive” who don’t care about production values might feel differently. For instance, Elvis Mitchell, wrote in the New York Times that “you’re likely to be utterly enchanted by this unique dish of entertainment that may be the beginning of a new art form: Village Surrealism. Mr. Weerasethakul’s film is like a piece of chamber music slowly, deftly expanding into a full symphonic movement; to watch it is to enter a fugue state that has the music and rhythms of another culture. It’s really a movie that requires listening, reminding us that the medium did become talking pictures at one point.” (A fugue state of mind, yes, but deft?)

 

©2003, Stephen O. Murray