At Cannes 2010, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” won the Palmde d’Or. The director, who instructed critics to simply call him Joe, gained acclaim earlier in his career for, amongst other titles, “Tropical Malady”. I haven’t seen Joe’s earlier work, but if it’s anything like “Boonmee”, at least I’ll be prepared for the Meaningfulness of it all. “Boonmee” is at times beautiful to behold, at others frustratingly tedious; overall, the film is so intent on presenting fascinating images and odd characters that it completely exhausted me. Seldom did I have to work so hard at interpreting what I think I’m seeing.
Uncle Boonmee is dying. As part of the process of letting go of the earthly, he retires to rural Thailand to live out his last days in peace and quiet. While there, he is visited by figures from his past who become very much part of the present – a deceased wife; a long lost son – and the film has moments where it seems to leave its main plot (as much as there is a plot) to arrive at differences moments in time and space that somehow (we aren’t guided as to how, exactly) link to Boonmee. By the time the woman by the waterfall discussed fate and life with the talking fish, I’d abandoned hope that somewhere, Joe will make it all make sense.
Maybe I seem unfair to “Uncle Boonmee”. I understand and agree that cinema can and should challenge viewers to engage with narrative models and structures that are vastly different to the Hollywood model. Often, it’s these films that are labelled “visionary” and “transcendental”. Consider David Lynch’s highly stimulating films on psyche and fantasy. His films differ greatly from how we’ve been trained to read movies, yet they’re quite accessible while remaining open to various interpretations. Lynch has had his failures – “Wild at Heart” – much like another visionary, Terrence Malick, who made “The Thin Red Line” into one of the best films I have ever seen, and who took the story of Pocahontas in “The New World” and made it into a self-indulgent bore.
If Lynch and Malick’s best work make the directors seem like professors of their craft who base their work on solid philosophical ideas and cultural currents, “Boonmee” makes Joe look like the interesting humanities student who has something to say but cannot get his audience (me; I don’t speak for those who fell head over heels for this film) to decode his message in anything other than broad thematic strokes. So, “Boonmee” is about Life and the Meaning of it all. The characters (and their character) mean little.
I may be being a bit deliberate, as I’m framing the film as self-conscious Art, and it is, but it is certainly not without merit. As Arty as it is, it provides some food for thought. Admittedly, most of that thought came from me, not from the movie. “Uncle Boonmee” is quite a sensory experience, even immersive at times. There are stunning scenes, such as in the latter part of the film when the fading protagonist and his family venture into a cave that becomes a galaxy. And at the beginning, there’s a moving, entirely convincing dinner conversation between the living, the dead and the animalistic. Towards the end, the film even manages to insert itself powerfully into Thai politics. It’s the overlong in-between that weighs the film down.
All in all, I’m growing weary of art as the Great Metaphysical Indecipherable.
And the fish? He eventually does something far more interesting than talk, I can tell you that. Just don’t ask me what it Means.
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