Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives opens in theaters March 2, and is about to become one of the most confusing and significant films to capture the screen. It is difficult to determine whether or not Uncle Boonmee is a good or bad film, although it was awarded the prestigious 2010 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or. It is beautifully shot on film, with an unhurried plot line that seemingly weaves its way through multiple places in time that have nothing to do with one another. The political within the film is just barely visible, with Uncle Boonmee’s mention of “killing too many communists” as a reason for the kidney failure he suffers from throughout the film. His health problems bring his sister-in-law Jen to his rural farm in Thailand to care for him, where they are accompanied by Boonmee’s dead wife and son, in ghost and ape-man form respectively. With the introduction of supernatural characters into an otherwise ordinary seeming world, as well as an apparently random sexual encounter between a princess and a catfish, the film is beyond confusing to anyone expecting a followable plot line.
However, Uncle Boonmee is more than just a beautifully confusing plot, as the significance of the film lies more in style and cinematography that reflect the history of cinema, Thailand, and Weerasethakul himself. In an interview while promoting the film in his own Thailand, he describes how the film embodies his own memories of old media that he grew up with, so that “the film became two persons, Boonmee and [Apichatpong], who remember all these things”. According to Weerasethakul, the film is composed of six different styles of filming in six different reels, and the entirety of it was shot on a 16mm camera before being blown up to 35mm; this is the reason for the grainy texture of the film that makes it resemble classic Thai cinema. This is truly what the film is about: the death of cinema and the ushering in of the digital age. There is significance in the political aspect as well as the implication of reincarnation and rebirth; yet the ties back to Thai cinema and the homage to classical cinema as a whole is what really draws one in to Uncle Boonmee.
The film emphasizes the relationships of human and animal- first with a beginning sequence featuring a water buffalo breaking free into the jungle, and then a catfish entering into an intimate relationship with a princess. It is scenes like the latter in Uncle Boonmee that make the film so difficult to watch; unexplained scenes that seem to have added nothing to the film besides a vaguely uncomfortable feeling. This is why it is especial to consider classic Thai cinema, as Weerasethakul “is heir to a long tradition of cinematic surrealism”, and the film is bringing this element of cinema together with the Buddhist beliefs that uncle Boonmee lives by; the result of this is a world in which there is no boundary between time, reality, or body. This lack of boundary is further highlighted by the supernatural elements introduced at Boonmee’s dinner table, first in the form of his long dead wife’s ghost and then his long-dead son appears as some sort of monkey spirit with red eyes that looks to belong in the original Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
As prior mentioned, the film is divided into six (the buffalo, the dinner, walk in the sun, princess and fish, the cave, the motel) different reels, each with it’s own style of film, story, lighting, sound, and acting. Noting the changes between each different reel is extraordinary; each reel becomes its’ own embodiment of different aspects that made up classic Thai cinema. In reel two, the lighting becomes strong and established, with stiff conversation and shots looking directly into the camera, reminiscent of classic 1953 Japanese film Tokyo Story, which is well known for awkward conversation and acting with long stares into the camera. The princess and the catfish scene, which is bound to be shocking for most viewers, appears to be it’s own plot and film entirely, with completely new characters, new setting, and no mention of Uncle Boonmee at all; it is as if this scene is in a completely new time all together (which it is). It strikes a recollective cord with that of a costume drama, and links itself with the rest of the film through “the idea of this transformation of a series of humans and animals, the connection between old cinema and new cinema”, according to Weerasethakul. Later, the cinematographic style of the film suddenly changes to that of a hand held documentary one as Uncle Boonmee journeys into a cave accompanied by his dead wife. It is crucial to also consider the change in sound here- many scenes are accompanied by the background noise of crickets chirping, but the cave is full of the sound of heavy breathing stemming from the actors as they trudge along the worn dirt path, almost making the cave seem alive.
While Uncle Boonmee is Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s homage to the Thailand he grew up in, the country’s critics were far from receptive to the themes and connotations within the feature. The release of the film comes at a difficult time for Thailand, as tensions between lower class rural areas as depicted in Uncle Boonmee and the wealthier population of urbanized areas like Bangkok have been at a high following . Uncle Boonmee in itself is not necessarily political in the content, it is more so in the meaning. It takes place within the northeastern rural Thailand Weerasethakul grew up in, and the bias toward the people in this region is clear. While it is a Thai film, Uncle Boonmee is written in a dialect specific to north-easterners and Laotian people, so that those raised in Bangkok are still forced to use subtitles despite the film originating from their country (Fuller). Uncle Boonmee’s victory at Cannes comes right after Bangkok’s crackdown on antigovernment protestors, many of whom are from the northeast that Weerasethakul favors so much.