Uncle Boonmee

[Howard Schumann]

Seen at the Vancouver International Film Festival
UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES
(Loong Boonmee raleuk chat)

Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand (2010), 106 minutes

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." - Albert Einstein

Set in the dense Nabua region of Thailand, Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s masterly Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a film about myths and memories and images that evoke the thin line between the world of reality and the world of spirit. Winner of the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival, it is not a film that can be approached in the normal way we view films - looking for a coherent narrative, and then following a plot until its resolution. Inspired by the abbot Phra Sripariyattiwetti’s 1983 book, A Man Who Can Recall Past Lives, Uncle Boonmee is like a dream that is real when you are dreaming but illogical when you wake up, a series of images, some dark, some beautiful, but most that can be experienced but not explained. It is a challenging and often impenetrable film that divides audiences into, in the director’s expression, “very like” and “very don't like.'' There seems to be no middle ground.

Boonmee (first-time actor Thanapat Saisaymar), a man dying of kidney failure on his fruit and honey farm, is surrounded by his sister-in-law Jen (Jenjira Pongpas), who has come to help out, his nephew Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee) and his helper, Laotian Jaai (Samud Kugasang), possibly an illegal immigrant, who regularly changes Boonmee's dialysis equipment. As he approaches his final days, Boonmee begins to see the ghosts and images from his present and past lives. His long dead wife Huay (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk) appears followed by his son Boonsong (Geerasak Kulhong) who disappeared thirteen years ago and has mated with a “monkey ghost”. Appearing in non-human form, with his long hair and glowing red eyes, he resembles a hairy Sasquatch. Amusingly, someone asks him, “Why did you grow your hair so long?”

Boonmee asks Huay how he will find her when he gets to heaven. To that she answers, “Heaven is over-rated, there's nothing there. And anyway”, she explains, “ghosts don't associate with places, they associate with people. We'll find each other.” For me, the implication is that heaven is not a place or location but the experience of enduring connection. Boonmee wonders if his illness is his karma brought on by killing too many bugs or too many communists in northeast Thailand, but Jen denies this, telling him that he did it only for the good of his country. Although the film stays away from any overt political commentary, a political element is expressed in photographs of monkey ghosts chained by soldiers and led to torture, allowing us to consider how communist prisoners suffered the same fate in real life. Weerasethakul has said that state censorship prohibits Thai filmmakers from making overtly political movies or anything considered a threat to national security.

In a gorgeous middle sequence which may be the film’s high point, an ancient princess (Wallapa Mongkolprasert) wearing bracelets and necklaces is carried on a covered conveyance on the shoulders of four men to a waterfall. Rejecting the love of one her soldiers (Sumit Suebsee), she is startled to see her younger face, reflected in the water, and it brings tears to her eyes. She is reassured, however, by an erotic talking catfish. "Deep down,” she says, “I know that reflection is an illusion"; the catfish/Boonmee responds, "I know that you're the same person I loved"; she answers, "That's an illusion too." As he awaits his death, Boonmee, Huay, Jen, and Tong visit a cave with white sand floors where Boonmee reveals that this was the place he was first born and that, at his genesis, he was "neither human nor animal, neither man nor woman." Following a stately Buddhist funeral, the scene shifts to an ordinary looking room where Jen and Roong (Kanokporn Thongaram) begin to add up funeral contributions when a saffron monk who looks like Tong enters and asks if he can take a shower. Filmed in 16mm as a tribute to the format of films from the director’s childhood, the scene has hints of a parallel universe.

Uncle Boonmee is a personal and heartfelt film from the director who has given us such masterpieces as Syndromes and a Century, Tropical Malady and Blissfully Yours. It is a haunting and hypnotic experience but it can be very challenging because of the slowness of its pace and the fact that it engages the senses more than the emotions. The type of spirituality the film depicts may be vastly different from Western ideas, yet the film’s notion that nothing is separate from anything else, that every living thing is part of the divine whether it is an insect, an animal, or a human being speaks to me of a world where nature has purpose and intelligence. Similarly, in the enduring relationship between Boonmee and Huay, and the picture of a dying man comforted by family and friends, the film offers an experience of the permanence of love.

GRADE: A-

For a look at Chris Knipp’s review click here

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for this illuminating comment. Your review is better than mine in that a positive response -- and you are of course more open to many of the ideas of the film than I tend to be -- usually leads to better things being said when sympathy is called for, as in this case, to elucidate what the filmmaker is trying to do.

I would not say Thanapat Saisaymar is "an old man," though I cannot find out his age.

The response is another question. I'd say not "very not like" but simply indifferent, because though sometimes impressed at the originality, much of the time I simply don't connect. I said in my festival roundup:

Festivals favor films that set themselves apart from mainstream fare. This means a leaning toward work that is hard to understand, glacially slow, often shot cooly, like Hou Hsiao-hsien's and some other Asian directors', from a certain distance with a stationary camera. There's also a taste for features that merge fiction with documentary elements, especially exotic ones. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cannes winner, fills the bill. He has every right to go his own way. However when all is said and done he works so far out on the margins that he connects emotionally only occasionally.

A Guardian article datelined Paris says that though Le Monde and L'Express praised the film, many other French critics "turned on" it, delcaring it 'pointless, obscure and excruciatingly boring'. But at the risk of not being very dramatic, I have to acknowledge that this filmmaker establishes his own special mood and has arrestingly strange moments, as well as some beautiful ones. I cannot say "very not like." I can only not say "very like." There is a difference.

[Chris Knipp]

Correction: I did find his age. Thanapat, according to an article about him, is 42. That is hardly an "old man.' Otherwise as far as I can tell your information about the film is excellent. And you illuminate its probably intended meanings much better than I could. I, on the other hand, speak for the many who find the film "largely not only alien and strange but also fey and self-indulgent," though I insist on the reservation: "nonetheless you have to grant that the director has natural cinematic gifts and his work is sui generis."

[Howard Schumann]

Thanks for reading my review. I have some things to say which may tick you off. In order for me to express what I'm feeling, however, I have to be willing for that to happen. The last thing I want to do is hurt your feelings because you are like a brother to me.

I really don't mind if you have a negative view of the film but what does annoy me is that there seems to be no willingness in your review to say things like "I feel that" or "I think that". You say the film makes "rational types go into reject mode". I'm not trying to tell you how to write a review since you are an outstanding critic by any measure but I just wish you would speak for yourself. If it makes you go into reject mode, say so.

Conversation at the table seems "deadpan" and "everyday" because it is in Thailand not Altoona. In Eastern religions and in native cultures and actually in many religions throughout the world, visitations from spirits and animism is accepted as a way of life and not out of the ordinary. To people with "unsympathetic eyes, you say that it may appear "alien and strange" or "fey and self-indulgent" Who are these people with unsympathetic eyes? Would that be you by any chance? If so, please come out and say so. You seem reluctant to take a stand, shuffling it off to "rational types", or "some people would say", or quoting some inept IMdb contributor. Yes, some people, (some Westerners pehaps?) can be spooked or scared or mesmerized but the purpose of the film is not to produce another commercial horror film. It is an expression of a way of life that is deeper than the Twilight Zone and looks at the world as an expression of the divine.

[Chris Knipp]

Not much time so in haste.... I often use "I" in reviews but not always. Here I am partly speaking for a whole group of non-believers in this director, as you are speaking, I think, for those who love and appreciate him more. This is not hiding my own views. Anybody can see what they are. But I see positive aspects too. And I say so.

I have noted the sensory joys of his work, maybe even more than hou do, since you focus so much on the spiritual content. He has said that almost everybody in the part of Thailand he comes from believes in spirits and ghosts. I know that. But I don't come from that world. However, that isn't the problem. There is no problem. Except that his work doesn't move me or connect with me as it does with you.

This may not concern you and need not, but he has not had any theatrical showings in this country that I know of. Only festivals. Threre are reasons for this. The appeal is limited. This as I say may not interest you. But I write reviews that address themselves to general concerns, a more general, if educated, audience. Hence I note the aspects that are off-putting. I am writing to inform, as well as to express personal opinions.

[Howard Schumann]

Not much time so in haste.... I often use "I" in reviews but not always. Here I am partly speaking for a whole group of non-believers in this director, as you are speaking, I think, for those who love and appreciate him more. This is not hiding my own views. Anybody can see what they are. But I see positive aspects too. And I say so.

I have noted the sensory joys of his work, maybe even more than hou do, since you focus so much on the spiritual content. He has said that almost everybody in the part of Thailand he comes from believes in spirits and ghosts. I know that. But I don't come from that world. However, that isn't the problem. There is no problem. Except that his work doesn't move me or connect with me as it does with you.

This may not concern you and need not, but he has not had any theatrical showings in this country that I know of. Only festivals. Threre are reasons for this. The appeal is limited. This as I say may not interest you. But I write reviews that address themselves to general concerns, a more general, if educated, audience. Hence I note the aspects that are off-putting. I am writing to inform, as well as to express personal opinions.

All I'm saying Chris is that if the film doesn't move you or you cannot connect with it, say so. I know you don't "come from that world", but that is just the point. If you are writing reviews to inform as well as to express opinions, I don't think your review should mirror popular misconceptions about Eastern thoughts but to inform others about the cultural differences. Using words like "alien" and "strange", "fey" and "silly" only reinforces prejudices and is condescending in the extreme.

You imply that there is something wrong with the film because it doesn't appeal to a wider audience or hasn't been shown in local multiplexes. You can find all kinds of films in wide distribution that are totally without quality. The fact is that despite your implication in your earlier post that the film was poorly reviewed, nothing could be further from the truth. This is one of the most positively reviewed films I can recall. Here is just a small example:

• Boxoffice Magazine (Richard Mowe) review [4/5]
• The Guardian at Cannes 2010 (Peter Bradshaw) review [5/5]
• Cinopsis critique [+3 de -3..+4]
• ViewLondon (Matthew Turner) review [3/5]
• eye WEEKLY (Jason Anderson) review [5/5]
• eye WEEKLY (Jason Anderson) review [5/5]
• NOW Magazine (Norman Wilner) review [5/5]
• The Globe and Mail (Liam Lacey) capsule review [4/4]
• NOW Magazine capsule review [5/5]
• Time Out Online (Geoff Andrew) review [3/5]

I focus on the spiritual content because that is what the film is about. I also indicate that it may be limited in its appeal to Western audiences because it is slow and enigmatic.

[Chris Knipp]

Howard,

All in all I think we respect each other's reviews, but it is best if you do not instruct me in how to write my reviews. I don't suggest that you write yours differently either.

Peace,

Chris

[Howard Schumann]

Howard,

All in all I think we respect each other's reviews, but it is best if you do not instruct me in how to write my reviews. I don't suggest that you write yours differently either.

Peace,

Chris

Yes, I agree. It is best but sometimes it is hard not to let one's emotions get into it. Interestingly, I just talked to my son in Phoenix for an hour about the differences between a discussion and an argument, a topic he is having in one of the classes he is teaching - very appropriate.

Best
Howard

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, I agree. It is best but sometimes it is hard not to let one's emotions get into it. Interestingly, I just talked to my son in Phoenix for an hour about the differences between a discussion and an argument, a topic he is having in one of the classes he is teaching - very appropriate.

Best
Howard

I just wanted to say "Hmmm...." but the software told me that's too short a reply.