Cemetery Of Splendor (12A.)
Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Starring Jenjira Pongpas Widner, Banlip Lomnoi, Jarinpattra Rueangram and Petcharat Chaiburi. Thai with subtitles. 122 mins.
Thai director Weerasethakul, a former winner of the Barn Door at Cannes, is of the paint drying school of art house cinema; so for him to make a film about people, a group of soldiers, affected by an unexplained sleeping disease is to tempt fate rather heavily. Watching it on a hot, close Friday afternoon I have to say the condition was dangerously infectious but if you can keep your eyes and mind open, you may come to embrace the mysteries of Weerasethakul's serene and soothing film.
Groups of relatives come and visit the soldiers, who slumber in an old school room that has been converted into a hospital. A medium Keng (Rueangram) is employed to communicate their dreams. A volunteer Jenjira (Pongpas Widner) is drawn towards Itt (Lomnoi) who never has any visitors. Life goes on around them. A digger is excavating the ground outside the hospital, part of a secret government project.
Weerasethakul's USP is a mundane, casual presentation of the supernatural – the film drifts between dreams and wakefulness, life and death, this world and the next. No distinction is made between and there is little indication as to which is which. The style is slow and simple; mostly longish static shots of unremarkable locations. There is almost no music, one occasion when the camera moves and a single dissolve.
Usually this kind of inscrutable foreign language film come across as aloof and smug; their impenetrability is like reams of red-tape a jobsworth bureaucrat has thrown at you to make your life unnecessarily difficult. You will have trouble making head or tails of this splendid cemetery but at least its style is open and welcoming; it doesn't seem to be going out of its way to give you a hard time, its just made that way. It is ordinary and magical; otherworldly but in a down to earth kind of way.
Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Starring Jenjira Pongpas Widner, Banlip Lomnoi, Jarinpattra Rueangram and Petcharat Chaiburi. Thai with subtitles. 122 mins.
Thai director Weerasethakul, a former winner of the Barn Door at Cannes, is of the paint drying school of art house cinema; so for him to make a film about people, a group of soldiers, affected by an unexplained sleeping disease is to tempt fate rather heavily. Watching it on a hot, close Friday afternoon I have to say the condition was dangerously infectious but if you can keep your eyes and mind open, you may come to embrace the mysteries of Weerasethakul's serene and soothing film.
Groups of relatives come and visit the soldiers, who slumber in an old school room that has been converted into a hospital. A medium Keng (Rueangram) is employed to communicate their dreams. A volunteer Jenjira (Pongpas Widner) is drawn towards Itt (Lomnoi) who never has any visitors. Life goes on around them. A digger is excavating the ground outside the hospital, part of a secret government project.
Weerasethakul's USP is a mundane, casual presentation of the supernatural – the film drifts between dreams and wakefulness, life and death, this world and the next. No distinction is made between and there is little indication as to which is which. The style is slow and simple; mostly longish static shots of unremarkable locations. There is almost no music, one occasion when the camera moves and a single dissolve.
Usually this kind of inscrutable foreign language film come across as aloof and smug; their impenetrability is like reams of red-tape a jobsworth bureaucrat has thrown at you to make your life unnecessarily difficult. You will have trouble making head or tails of this splendid cemetery but at least its style is open and welcoming; it doesn't seem to be going out of its way to give you a hard time, its just made that way. It is ordinary and magical; otherworldly but in a down to earth kind of way.
