"You don't have to understand everything," explains Apichatpong Weerasethakul about his Palm d'Or winning, enigmatic and ambiguous "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" (2010) in a 2010 interview with The Guardian. This remark by the author of the film is very simple but even more relevant as such since it is, I believe, precisely the unconscious demand for clarity and unity, a rational need to understand which leads many spectators astray when it comes to Weerasethakul's cinema. The torment of understanding is what ruins the viewing experience for far too many, making it harder for them to see the simple beauty of films like "Uncle Boonmee".
In all its simplicity, "Uncle Boonmee" is a story about a dying man. His family and other close ones take care of him as he requires daily doses of dialysis. On one night, his dead wife appears as a ghost to chat with him and his caretakers at a serene veranda only to be followed by the unexpected arrival of his long lost son who has now turned into an ape with glaring red eyes. A surprisingly calm discussion between those involved takes place, including a few flashback sequences, which slowly lead the way to a new day, a journey to a cave, and finally a detachment from this story to another.
There are no spoilers here because they do not exist in the Weerasethakul canon. His films are less about stories and more about images. The gulf between those who love Weerasethakul and those who despise him begins in this division: one tries to find a coherent and consistent story in the images, explaining objects in the screen space as symbols for something much clearer and less vague, while the other tries to embrace the images themselves not as symbols but as what they are, images. One could think of it as cinematic music, a peculiar language of the rhythm which does not call for conceptual understanding but a pre-reflective reception.
In addition to Weerasethakul's style, consisting of long takes, slow editing rhythm, large shot scales, lack of non-diegetic music, and a relentless use of ellipsis, which might create discontent in some spectators, there is also a more thematic, or "content-oriented," explanation for this discontent. "Uncle Boonmee" is about crossing boundaries. Halfway into the film, one is ready to accept a dialogue between people and ghosts as natural or a sexual encounter between a princess and a fish as nothing out of the ordinary. Conceptual distinctions into categories such as past and present, man and woman, animal and human, nature and culture, reason and emotion, dream and reality coalesce and disappear. This is why they will not serve a spectator trying to find a conceptually understandable story in the pervasiveness of the images. One could see the circularity of the narrative as a reflection of reincarnation, but even this seems too categorical. To me, there is only a fragmented narrative without clear boundaries unfolding like a beautiful poem without the burden of words.
Hopefully this has not come off as an attack. The foregoing discussion has been nothing but a modest attempt to open streams of curiosity. I have tried to explain the division between those who admire and those who despise "Uncle Boonmee". I have located the latter's discontent in Weerasethakul's unique style (using slowness and serenity to create cinematic lyricism which challenges our conceptual understanding) and the film's thematic treatise on crossed boundaries (combining purported conceptual distinctions into one to create a non-linear narrative which challenges our conceptual understanding). Clearly this is not everything, but it is "everything" in less than one thousand words. To Weerasethakul, the discontent of some means nothing but the success of his cinema: "if I make a film that divides the audience, I feel like that's a certain level of success," Weerasethakul tells The Guardian. In the spirit of this remark, there is nothing left to say other than a request to give Weerasethakul's cinema a chance rather than condemning it on the basis of one's own purported categorical distinctions. Like in the films of Ozu or Bresson, the objects in the screen space are not symbolic; the images themselves are what count -- and it is those images where Weerasethakul's cinema returns to.
In all its simplicity, "Uncle Boonmee" is a story about a dying man. His family and other close ones take care of him as he requires daily doses of dialysis. On one night, his dead wife appears as a ghost to chat with him and his caretakers at a serene veranda only to be followed by the unexpected arrival of his long lost son who has now turned into an ape with glaring red eyes. A surprisingly calm discussion between those involved takes place, including a few flashback sequences, which slowly lead the way to a new day, a journey to a cave, and finally a detachment from this story to another.
There are no spoilers here because they do not exist in the Weerasethakul canon. His films are less about stories and more about images. The gulf between those who love Weerasethakul and those who despise him begins in this division: one tries to find a coherent and consistent story in the images, explaining objects in the screen space as symbols for something much clearer and less vague, while the other tries to embrace the images themselves not as symbols but as what they are, images. One could think of it as cinematic music, a peculiar language of the rhythm which does not call for conceptual understanding but a pre-reflective reception.
In addition to Weerasethakul's style, consisting of long takes, slow editing rhythm, large shot scales, lack of non-diegetic music, and a relentless use of ellipsis, which might create discontent in some spectators, there is also a more thematic, or "content-oriented," explanation for this discontent. "Uncle Boonmee" is about crossing boundaries. Halfway into the film, one is ready to accept a dialogue between people and ghosts as natural or a sexual encounter between a princess and a fish as nothing out of the ordinary. Conceptual distinctions into categories such as past and present, man and woman, animal and human, nature and culture, reason and emotion, dream and reality coalesce and disappear. This is why they will not serve a spectator trying to find a conceptually understandable story in the pervasiveness of the images. One could see the circularity of the narrative as a reflection of reincarnation, but even this seems too categorical. To me, there is only a fragmented narrative without clear boundaries unfolding like a beautiful poem without the burden of words.
Hopefully this has not come off as an attack. The foregoing discussion has been nothing but a modest attempt to open streams of curiosity. I have tried to explain the division between those who admire and those who despise "Uncle Boonmee". I have located the latter's discontent in Weerasethakul's unique style (using slowness and serenity to create cinematic lyricism which challenges our conceptual understanding) and the film's thematic treatise on crossed boundaries (combining purported conceptual distinctions into one to create a non-linear narrative which challenges our conceptual understanding). Clearly this is not everything, but it is "everything" in less than one thousand words. To Weerasethakul, the discontent of some means nothing but the success of his cinema: "if I make a film that divides the audience, I feel like that's a certain level of success," Weerasethakul tells The Guardian. In the spirit of this remark, there is nothing left to say other than a request to give Weerasethakul's cinema a chance rather than condemning it on the basis of one's own purported categorical distinctions. Like in the films of Ozu or Bresson, the objects in the screen space are not symbolic; the images themselves are what count -- and it is those images where Weerasethakul's cinema returns to.