Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives [2010]

 Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasthakul’s eccentric and strangely enchanting darling of the arthouse circuit, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, is a beguiling mix of avant garde video essay, narrative experimentation, magic realism, ghost story, meditation on memory and mortality, and sharp political commentary. The movie, therefore, was alternately poetic, melancholic, baffling and even weird. Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) is an ageing farm owner suffering from severe kidney ailment, and is spending his final days in the company of his caring sister-in-law Jen (Jenjira Pongpas) and doting nephew Tong at his jungle enclave. Their tranquil, uneventful lives face an interesting jolt – though the otherworldly development is presented in the most undramatic way possible – when, one evening, he’s visited by the phantasm of his long dead wife, and his missing son who’s taken the furry form of a mythical “monkey ghost”. Both spatial and temporal flows were set aside as a series of oblique episodes are portrayed in dream-like manner – a princess sensitive about her physical appearance indulging in bizarre erotica, a mysterious journey by Boonmee and those around him to a cave deep within the jungle, and Tong’s embracing of Buddhist monkhood upon his uncle’s demise that ends with his and Jen’s splitting of their physical selves. These languidly paced surreal happenings – which were intriguing, ambiguous and at times infuriating too – made for an infusion of the supernatural into the mundane. Two deceptively sharp political moments, interestingly, stood out – a poor illegal immigrant from Laos who’s suspected by Jen as an untrustworthy alien best avoided, and Boonmee’s pensive recollection of his participation in the brutal massacre of Communist sympathizers by the Thai military forces during the 60s and 70s.

 

 

 

 

 

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Genre: Drama/Surrealist Drama/Magic Realism

Language: Thai

Country: Thailand

Headshot [2011]

Thai New Wave director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s Headshot is a solid genre exercise brimming with style, laced with moody atmosphere and filled with classic noir tropes – hardboiled anti-hero who refuses to budge, “hooker with a heart of gold”, an enigmatic femme fatale who gives him a fortuitous lift, and enough double crosses to keep one busy. The film, however, also had distinctive arthouse sensibilities – be it in its stylized set-pieces or fine usage of silence or the protagonist’s existential uncertainties that manifested both viscerally and allegorically. Hence, even if the plotting was contrived at places or the slickness felt tad overdone, it still managed to be a taut and assured piece of filmmaking. It began on a compelling note as the taciturn Tul (Nopporn Chaiyanam), a contract killer, carefully shaves his head upon receiving his latest assignment in an envelope, and then dresses as a monk in order to assassinate a politician. Unfortunately, he also gets hit in the head by a bullet during the shootout, and wakes up from a coma three months later realizing that his vision has turned upside down and that, perhaps ironically, he’s seeing things clearer now. The fractured, non-linear narrative created a sense of disorientation as it kept jumping back and forth in establishing his background – he was an honest cop who got framed by a drug-dealer, which had landed him in the jail – and, what proceeded thereafter as he’s pursued by the dead man’s brutal son who arrives at torture scenes on a bicycle, and a mysterious lady who he keeps bumping into, apparently coincidentally. The spare storytelling and stunning cinematography added to the hardboiled existential cool of this “Buddhist neo-noir”.

Director: Pan-Ek Ratanaruang
Genre: Action/Thriller/Crime Thriller
Language: Thai
Country: Thailand