Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives: A Review

            Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the latest from Thai avant-garde filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, opens modestly. A water buffalo is shown breaking free from his chain and wandering deep into the heart of a dense forest. The sequence is quiet, beautiful, and visually breathtaking. It is from here that Weerasethakul’s exploration of spirituality, nature, and modernity can begin.

            The film chronicles the final few days of Uncle Boonmee. Suffering from kidney failure, the titular character is forced to have in-home dialysis while his sister, her son, and a male nurse watch over him. While he carries out his final days, the ghosts of his deceased wife and son appear before everyone. While the wife materializes out of this air, his son (who has taken the form of a Monkey-Ghost) slowly walks out of the darkness. The characters talk casually with the ghosts, almost as if there’s no surprise that they’re there. This kind of natural interaction with the spirit world is commonplace for the characters that inhabit the film.

There’s no denying that Uncle Boonmee is a bit of a challenge to watch. Breaking from conventionally formed narrative cinema, Weerasethakul creates a methodic, melancholic pace through the use of long takes, sparing camera movement, and infrequent editing. From the opening sequence (a few well-designed tracking shots following a bull in a forest) the audience is aware that they’re about to witness something that tugs and pulls at the status quo.

            The most often used phrase in reviewing this 2010 Palme d’Or winner is “dream-like.” The long takes, slow movement, rare camera movement, and spiritual content all lend themselves to dreamlike interpretations. The images fall into one another, oftentimes seeming to be juxtaposed because of compositional content rather than narrative coherence. The movements of the actors are slow and methodical. In fact, many of the lines seem to be delivered with Brechtian detachment. Contrary to the title, Uncle Boonmee isn’t a character-driven film. Rather than using the concepts of spirituality, the afterlife, and reincarnation to explore the internal psyche of a single character, Weerasethakul uses the characters to achieve loftier goals. Modernity, spirituality, and the natural world are all given adequate exploration without anything becoming heavy handed or pretentious.

            The film’s most striking moments come during and after a visually stunning journey deep inside of a cave. Like the water buffalo that occupied the opening sequence, the characters travel into the bosom of a forest. On this journey to confront death and meditate on life, they confront immense natural beauty, encounter monkey-ghosts with red, glowing eyes, and reflect on the womb-like nature of the natural world.

            Immediately following this dream-like journey, Boonmee delivers a stirring monologue about the future. He warns that, in the years to come, the past will begin to disappear as agents of the future modernize the world. His point here is punctuated much later by the final shot of the film, showing three characters (one of them, a Buddhist monk) staring blankly at a television screen. The modern world is forcing us to forget the past, and our connection to the spiritual world along with it. While this message (and much of the film) may seem steeped in unattainable Thai philosophy, the core of the film – its images, story, and emotions – are universal.

Sam Flancher

Films watched recently: The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Bulworth, Goodfellas, Scarface, Sullivan's Travels, The Notebook,  Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Antichrist, Shadows and Fog, Les Mistons, Boyz n' the Hood, Love on the Run