LFF 2010: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with the first of several reports from the 54th BFI London Film Festival. Dave started things off the other day with thoughts on festival opener Never Let Me Go and a grab bag of London delights, but first up for me is a trip to Thailand with this year's celebrated Palme d'Or winner.

Ah, Uncle Boonmee. You’ll now be able to add the LFF to your lifetime of recollections. File it alongside your many prestigious appearances at other key festivals this past year – the crowning achievement of a Palme d’Or ushering you toward us here in London. Apichatpong ('Joe') Weerasethakul’s latest hothouse bedazzlement, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, is one of the LFF’s flagship titles. Keen festival followers may already be familiar with its plot, but a truncated version goes something like this: in the Thai countryside Uncle Boonmee is suffering from kidney failure; his final days are spent with family – both dead and alive, human and non-human – before he treks to a cave for his last moments.

Typical plot structure is prone to derailment by uncommon and unearthly visuals at any point; strange episodes (remembered moments from his past lives?) pepper the film. [spoilers] One sequence where a scarred princess has awkward, vigorous sex with a talking catfish is both absurdly compelling and stunningly filmed, and certainly something you won’t see anywhere else this, or any, year. Spectral visitations are a regular occurrence round gentle ol’ Boonmee’s house – making him a kind of lovely, reverse Scrooge – and are initially chilling, then rather becalming, especially the huge hair-covered beast with glowering red eyes who looms on a staircase before... sitting down for dinner. Boonmee’s long-deceased wife drops by, too; she materialises several times to the almost comical astonishment of the flesh Boonmee clan. [/spoilers] These characters baffle, but are indispensably alluring. When the film goes off on its wondrously weird whims it becomes pleasingly enigmatic.

Weerasethakul’s films often get posited as litmus tests of the true filmgoer’s arthouse mettle. (Just below ticking off titles on a Béla Tarr checklist.) There’s always guaranteed something soothingly elegiac to be taken from his work; something not always readily graspable, but inarguably extraordinary and sometimes belatedly fulfilling. But with Boonmee there’s a hint of strained repetition in the way he structures and presents – albeit still subtly, and with delicate, personable care – his sparse story. Familiar conceptual totems are present; wondrous shot compositions are correct. But is Weerasethakul in danger of prematurely recycling his already well-used ideas? Both his last two features Tropical Malady and Syndromes of a Century were delightfully invigorating – even during their moments of stasis – but at times Boonmee often feels more like an extension of the same old, same old. I could recall his past films far too easily. (And, for me, the two film "recollections" from his recent ‘Primitive’ installation, Phantom of Nabua and this film’s precursor/side project, A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, served his core concerns well enough.) Still, more hulking, red-eyed jungle beasts wouldn’t go amiss next time. C+

Uncle Boonmee will be reincarnated at the LFF on Sunday 17th and Monday 18th October
related articles: Nathaniel's review from NYFF and Oscar's Best Foreign Film Competitive List.

NYFF: "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives"

*slight spoilers ahead but this is not a "plot" film.*

Uncle Boonmee can recall his past lives. My memory is hardly as uncanny. Recalling or describing Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the Cannes Palme D'Or winner and Thailand's Oscar submission, even a few days after the screening is mysteriously challenging. Even your notes won't help you.

This is not to say that the movie isn't memorable, rather that its most memorable images and stories refuse direct interpretation or cloud the edges of your vision, making it as hazy as the lovely cinematography. You can recall the skeletal story these images drift towards like moths and you can try to get to know the opaque characters that see them with you but these efforts have a low return on investment. What's important is the seeing.

What's wrong with my eyes? They are open but I can't see a thing.

Most synopses of the movie will only embellish on the film's title. And while Uncle Boonmee does reflect on past lives, he only does so directly in the pre-title sequence as we follow him in ox form through an attempted escape from his farmer master, who will eventually rope him back in. The bulk of the film is not a recollection -- at least not from Boonmee himself, but a slow march towards his death while he meditates on life and the film meditates on animal and human relations. His nephew and sister in law, who objects to his immigrant nurse, visit him. So too does his dead wife and another ghostly visitor on the same night, in a bravura early sequence that as incongruously relaxed as it is eery and startling.

The film peaks well before its wrap with the story of a scarred princess and a lustful talking catfish and then we begin the march towards Boonmee's death, perhaps the most literal moment in the movie. And then curiously, the movie continues on once he's gone. If it loses much of its potency after Boonmee has departed, there are still a few fascinating images to scratch your head over when he's gone.

The bifurcated structure that Weerathesakul has employed in the past is less prevalent this time.  Uncle Boonmee plays out not so much like two mysteriously reflective halves (see the haunting Tropical Malady which I find less accessible but actually stronger), but rather like a series of short films that all belong to the same continuous chronological movie, give or take that gifted horny catfish.

Surely a google search, press notes, academic analysis or listening to the celebrated director Apichatpong "Joe" Weerathesakul speak (as I did after the screening) would and can provide direct meaning to indirect cinema. But what's important is the seeing.

Vision is frequently mentioned and referenced in Uncle Boonmee, whether it's mechanical -- as in a preoccupation with photography which peaks in a late film sequence composed of still images -- or organic. But like the ghost monkey with glowing red eyes (the film's signature image) says to Uncle Boonmee early in the film, "I can't see well in the bright light." It's the one exchange in the film that I wholly related to and understood. I'm not sure I need or want to understand, to attach specific meaning to these confounding stories and images. I only want to see them. Weerasethakul's movie is best experienced in the dark, with the images as spiritual guides. They fall around you like mosquito netting as you walk slowly through the Thai jungle. B+/B

Foreign Film Race: Coco Martin's Winning Moves, France's Losing Streak

Coco Martin (left) is smiling because his career is going so nicely, thank you very much. He employs the savvy modern move of many a contemporary Hollywood star which is to say he alternates between mainstream projects for the fame/money and indie films for the cred. 'One for audiences, one for me' as it were (see also: Clooney, Moore and dozens of American A-listers). The irony for stars outside of the Bollywood and Hollywood mega-systems though is that the "art" or indie projects are really the only way you get fame/money in the international sphere, since that's the stuff that travels and wins international honors in other countries

Coco is the star of the Pinoy Oscar submission Noy which he also co-wrote and co-produced. If you recognize him at all, it's probably as the frequent muse of The Philippines most internationally recognized director Brillante Dante Mendoza for whom he starred in the violent Cannes lauded/loathed Kinatay, the gay DVD hit The Masseur and in Serbis about a troubled family running a porn theater which had a brief US run.

Mendoza has nothing to do with this film, but I bring it up because Coco's next film, a reunion with Brillante Mendoza, is called Captured and will co-star none other than Isabelle Huppert. Talk about reasons for a young actor to smile.

 Coco plus Isabelle for lucky man Mendoza

I'm pretty sure I compile the foreign film charts each year mostly due to my OCD with movies. Sadly, with distribution the way it is and the new Academy Best Picture field expanded to 10, one dream of mine will always be a windmill to tilt at. I've always wanted to cover both races head on, as if it's Best English Language Picture vs. Best Picture in a Language Other Than English for some invisible Best of Best Statue within the same Oscar coverage year. But now, even if all of 15 pictures were released in time, which they never are, it'd be a lopsided head on battle, 10 against 5. The symmetry is all ruined even if the sorry state of foreign film distribution hadn't already done the dream in.

Still... in the fantasy movie land inside my head where there are never any time constraints and watching movies happens in the blink of an eye so you can fit dozens into each day without eye strain, I have always hoped to one day place them head to head, like Best Foreign Film Shortlist 1970 vs. Best Picture Shortlist 1970 = which is better? which is the best of the best? Etcetera. Someday...

Austria to France. I've just seen France's entry Of Gods and Men and it's a strong tear wringing contender that handily avoids the treacly by going quiet and meditative to look at the last days of a Christian monastery in an increasingly terror-addled Muslim village. I definitely could see it shortlisted but I'm not sure it's a "winner". France has had difficulty with that in the past 30 years. In fact, since their amazing run in the 1970s  -- they won four times in just one decade (!) for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeousie, Day for Night, Madame Rosa and  Get Our Your Handkerchiefs  -- they've only won once. That was for 1992's Indochine which also landed Catherine Deneuve her only nomination. I'm still sad they lost when The Class (2008) was up for the naked gold man. What a brilliant film that was.

But speaking of Indochine (pictured left) it's interesting that virtually all distributors, even the ones who are good at pushing foreign films like Sony Pictures Classics, have forgotten how much more momentum you can gather if you open in the actual calender year and get yourself on top ten lists and in other Oscar category races, too.

I recognize there are holes in this theory. It didn't work for Amélie but you know that year had to have been a squeaker with the Bosnian film No Man's Land just edging it out. And it didn't work for The White Ribbon unless you consider that maybe it wouldn't have even been nominated (not exactly their favorite style of film) if it hadn't been able to build such a huge tidal wave of "masterpiece" citations before they had to vote on the nominees plus a last weekend of December release is hardly a "momentum" date.

But still... I'm hoping at least two of the future nominees find a way to play in theaters before the end of the calendar year instead of waiting for February or March and banking on the elusive Oscar spotlight.

Germany to The Netherlands. Greece's Dogtooth and India's Peepli [Live] have had US releases prior to submission announcements. But they're lonely. While many of the submissions have played at either Toronto or Sundance only three (thus far) have seen the insides of regular movie theaters. The other one is Peru's moving gay drama Contracorriente (Undertow).

Norway to Venezuela. I can't imagine Oscar going for Thailand's absolutely bizarre Uncle Boonmee... having now seen it. But I remain pleased that it's in the mix. That said -- and maybe I'm alone in this -- but I think it's more accessible than Apichatpong Weerathesakul's most succesful export thus far, Tropical Malady so I think it could theoretically nab some attention once it's in theaters. How much and when remains to be seen. (More on "Joe's" filmography here in the "Modern Maestros" series.)

I need help. I have been unable to locate movie posters (I have stills already) and official sites for Iran's Farewell Baghdad, Israel's The Human Resources Manager and Macedonia's Mothers if anyone can provide.

Which country are you rooting for thus far? I've seen but three official submissions thus far (Thailand, France and Peru) and all would make worthwhile or at least solid nominees and in roughly that order of preference... More please!
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