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Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives review
:. Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
:. Starring: Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas
:. Script: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
:. Running Time: 1:53
:. Year: 2010
:. Original Title: Loong Boonmee Raleuk Chat
:. Country: Thailand
:. Official Site: Uncle Boonmee
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It is now a compelling truth, a known fact, almost a law: the film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul is one of the most inventive and most beautiful of all. It is for us to provide that little effort to adhere to his unique world, to the melody of visual poetry that emerges imperceptibly from his shots, to his singular modernity. In the vein of his previous works, Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is his most accessible film and his most successfully completed to this day. Drawing on nature's tutelary strengths, he explores the animistic culture of his country through the last journey of a man suffering from kidney failure.
Behind seemingly simple sequences, constructed mostly from static shots, a sensitive poetry lurks, tinged with mysticism. In the cinema of the man nicknamed Jo, sets play a prominent role, with which the characters communicate. We are far from the noisy city, in the throes of civil war. It is far from the clichés of the metropolis, with its aerial expressways, its tourists in search of fun, its huge shopping malls and insomniac clubs. At Jo's, nature takes center stage: catfish make love to disfigured princesses, whose beauty is reflected on the surface of the fleeting water, and the spirits invite themselves to dinner, not to chill the blood but to accompany their loved ones on the eve of their death, even if they appear in the guise of a sort of Chewbacca with black hair and glowing eyes. These same spirits, for which Thais build houses under their own roofs and reminding us that the forces of nature feed Jo's cinema, erect bridges between the living and the afterlife. They invite themselves to the table of the living, as would a member of the family who makes an impromptu visit.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul believes in the transmigration of souls between humans, plants, animals and ghosts. Never ridiculous, falsely naive and simple, the scenes give off an intrinsic beauty that comes from magic. This same magic found on the screen encourages the viewer's imagination. For in this film, none of Boonmee's previous lives are explicitly told. On the contrary, elements of these lives overlap with the story: here a buffalo, there a princess. Many representations exist as in cinema itself: the machine that creates parallel worlds, other lives.
Moland Fengkov
Translated into English by Christina Azarnia
 Tropical Malady
Cannes film festival 2010
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