Apichatpong Weerasethakul's UNCLE BOONMEE and SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY at Walker Art Center

It is not much of a stretch to call Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century (2006) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) companion pieces. But the same could be said for Syndromes and Tropical Malady (2004), Malady and Blissfully Yours (2002), or Yours and Mysterious Object at Noon (2000)—each one a stair step to unchallenged mythical eminence of Weerasethakul’s oeuvre; each one achieving new heights; each one challenging my own blissful hyperbolic state. (The Adventures of Iron Pussy (2003), which Weerasethakul’s co-directed, is also somewhere in the mix, but entertainingly less grounded to his other work.)

The Walker Art Center hosts the Twin Cities' premiere screenings of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives this weekend and Syndromes and a Century next Thursday (which shamefully never got a theatrical screening here.) The Walker, way ahead of the curve on Weerasethakul’s work, screened his Mysterious Object at Noon in 2001 as a part of its Asian Currents program and later brought Weerasethakul to the Twin Cities for a Regis Dialog and retrospective in 2004. It is in keeping that the Walker would score an advanced screening of Weerasethakul’s Palme D’Or winner before it lands in New York City on March 2.

Uncle Boonmee earned top prize at Cannes less that a year ago and it wasn’t too long after that Stand picked up the U.S. rights to the film. Fans have certainly been waiting with baited breath, but even those unfamiliar with Weerasethakul's films would be hard pressed not to have noticed the rumblings of Uncle Boonmee’s mysterious ghosts. As one might guess by the title alone, Uncle Boonmee is not your average film—in the best possible way. Boonmee and his past lives are very much the subject of the film, but so are the grand enigmas of life, death and spirituality. With themes this big you might expect a certain amount of grandiose staging, but this is where Uncle Boonmee surpasses average and anything that you might expect.

Weerasethakul approaches the fate of Boonmee with gentle curiosity. Inspired by a book by the same name that Weerasethakul picked up from a monk, Uncle Boonmee is a relatively straightforward account of a man who is nearing death. It takes place, however, in a setting that evokes the supernatural. That setting not only incorporates the landscape and jungles of the Khon Kaen region of northern Thailand, but also Weerasethakul’s cinematic landscape where there is something very plainspoken about abstractions. Jen has traveled to the country to visit her brother-in-law, Boonmee, where he lives and tends to his tamarind grove and bee houses. She is accompanied by Tong, played by Weerasethakul favorite Sakda Kaewbuadee. Although Boonmee seems to be in good health, we learn of his kidney disease through an early scene depicting his dialysis.

Much of what happens in Uncle Boonmee is meant to float between the known and the unknown in the same way it floats between the past and the present, and a direct narrative and illusive diversions. There is an undeniable physicality to Boonmee’s peritoneal dialysis but it is gently rolled out right alongside mystical apparitions of reincarnation. Uncle Boonmee is a rare comment on death and spirituality that is completely original in film. With an ending that is best discovered, Uncle Boonmee lays a visual and symbolic path to the end—one of the most striking is the morning sun pouring into a cave revealing only part of Jen and Boonmee. Weersethakul’s poetic license is like an open door to interpretation that I have no intention on shutting. Peppered with magic and marvel, Uncle Boonmee goes out like a showboat ready to be painted with personal or political effects.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives plays twice: Friday at 7:30pm and Saturday again at 7:30pm. Although I have seen the film twice now (at the Vancouver International Film Festival) I wouldn't miss a chance to see it again on the big screen. At this time, it is unclear whether or not Uncle Boonmee will make another appearance in the Twin Cities. Despite the overwhelming critical praise it has received over the past ten months, it is far from a ‘marketable’ film that theaters are likely to jump on. I’m hoping to be proven wrong, but Weerasethakul’s previous film, Syndrome and a Century, is a case in point. Well received at festivals around the globe, Syndromes never received a theatrical screening in Minneapolis. Syndromes and a Century came out on DVD in the US a few years ago, but I have been living with the hope that someday it would get a belated theatrical screening. As soon as you see the beautiful digression that the film takes into a lush green field for the credits, you will see what I mean.

Humor, heart and beauty are at the center of every one of Weerasethakul’s films, but it reaches a swoony tipping point with Syndromes. The elliptical story revolves around two young doctors who exist in two realms of what seems to be a time-space continuum. The first half is set in a rural hospital where Dr. Toey is interviewing a new collegue, Dr. Nohng. The film breaks off to follow Dr. Toey as she visits patients, deals with a lovesick friend, and tells a story shown in flashback of her first love. The second half opens with the same interview between Dr. Toey and Dr. Nohng but it is set in the austere modern environs of a Bangkok hospital. After the interview the camera follows Dr. Nohng as he makes his rounds, visits with his girlfriend and shares some time with his co-workers taking nips out of a bottle of alcohol stashed in a prosthetic leg. Both stories are a sweet and unaffected exploration of the pains and journeys of love and companionship, both personal and professional.

Weerasethakul, the son of two doctors, has mentioned that the film was inspired by his own experiences, and is largely based on his parents’ lives before they married. Syndromes and a Century is a layered love story—perhaps with the true romance falling just slightly outside of the frame—but it effortlessly straddles motifs of ethics, science, Buddhism and compassion with an open heart and an open mind. In both Uncle Boonmee and Syndromes, Weerasethakul takes simple situations and cloaks them in a shroud of mystery. Is there something in the air? Maybe. At least that is the allusion that Syndromes makes near the end of the film as vapors are pulled into a ventilation system. Needless to say, we get pulled in with it.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Friday, February 18, 7:30
Saturday, February 19, 7:30

Syndromes and a Century
Thursday, February 24, 7:30 Free!

A poster too cool not to post.

Jimmy Corrigan might be the smarted kid on earth, but Chris Ware's Uncle Boonmee is the coolest poster on the earth.



The Twin Cities will get a sneak preview of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives next weekend at the Walker Art Center. Friday, February 18 at 7:30pm and Saturday, February 19 at 7:30pm.

Olivier Assayas at the Walker Art Center

Wednesday night the Walker Art Center hosts Olivier Assayas, one of the most interesting auteurs in contemporary film. But not the kind of stodgy auteur used to prop up theories and didactic criticism—Assayas is a new breed of auteur dedicated to global citizenship and shapeshifting genres. The dialogue, Wednesday night at 8pm with Kent Jones, comes right in the middle of an eleven film retrospective that wraps up with Assayas' new five-hour film Carlos at the end of the month. Assayas is a film critic in his own right and should offer a lively discussion. I'll be front and center.

Regis Dialogue with Olivier Assayas and Kent Jones
Wednesday, October 20, 8pm

Olivier Assayas: Between Love and Terror

Bahman Ghobadi's NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS

(Originally published on In Review Online. No One Knows About Persian Cats screened last month at the Walker and opens today at the Lagoon in Minneapolis.)

Musicians who dream about Rickenbacker guitars, Ludwig drum sets, and meeting Sigur Rós are nothing out of the ordinary. But when they are aspirations of young Iranians living in Tehran, there is an undeniable bitterness to these daydreams. The scene is one from Bahman Ghobadi’s new film No One Knows About Persian Cats in which the lightly tossed out fantasies of free-market equipment, unlimited energy drinks and traveling to Iceland to meet the world’s most beloved post-rock band act as empathetic connecting points for the audience despite the obvious social, political and geographic distance. These ambitions, as ordinary as they might seem to us, are secret islands of escape for the musicians who risk arrest in the name of rock and roll. Although the threat of popular music is a myth locked in the paranoia of Elvis’ gyrating hips or Kevin Bacon’s irrepressible need to dance, the threat in Iran is very real and treated with oppressive severity. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and company are not fans of freedom of expression, especially after the protests that gripped the nation last year, and they attempt to control it with an iron fist. But just like the cracks that exist for filmmakers, musicians and fans find a way to circulate and listen to the most forbidden music. This is the backdrop Kurdish director Ghobadi uses to airbrush a portrait of music that is independent by its very nature. The musicians are the cats, and Ghobadi wants to make sure we know about them.

The film quietly follows two musicians, Ashkan and Negar, as they travel around Tehran searching for musicians to complete their band and as they seek out the necessary passports and visas to make it to a gig in London. They find a friend and agent in Nadar, who is committed to helping the couple after he hears their CD. Flying low on Nadar’s motorcycle, the three of them give us an insider’s tour of the nooks and crannies of the underground channels of Tehran and the bands that makes up a veritable who’s who of the Iranian rock world. Compared to Granaz Moussavi’s My Tehran for Sale, a very similar film on the surface, No One Knows About Persian Cats is a free and lighthearted affair that breaks away from the well-known heavy hand of Iranian film—at least for most of the film. The breezy cast of characters, all playing themselves, is a world away from anything you might expect to find. The paper-thin plot simply allows for quality time with the very likeable Ashkan and Negar, and for full, music video enhanced tracks from artists you have never heard of but wish you had. Normally I’m a harsh critic to the MTV influenced segues masquerading as content, but there is no masquerade in Persian Cats: these are full-on music video expositions that exist for the sake of the music not the film, not the other way around.
Persian Cats opens with a twist on the normal fictional disclaimer, stating, “This film is based on real people, real locations and real events.” Ghobadi should have stuck to this edict, because everything he builds with the real people and real places is diminished by the trumped up events that are supposed to give the film its powerful finale. Fact and fiction are employed, but they are never blurred. There is a definitive line between the effortless facts and the forced fiction. Ghobadi has proven with A Time for Drunken Horses and Turtles Can Fly that he can make thoughtful dramas out of very real situations, but it is almost like Ghobadi forgot that those two forces should work with, not against, one another. To its credit, the film is filled with simple, understated scenarios that break the stereotypical tropes of Iranian society. Waiting for information about their doctored visas, Negar strikes up a conversation with a woman who is also waiting. The woman would normally be a symbol of subjugation, but instead we listen to her casually chat about how she is going to aimlessly travel the world and about how she loves indie rock. The sequence is sweetly abstract and far more powerful than the downward spiral that ends the film. When the dramatic shoe drops—and it hits hard—all investment in these ‘real’ people is gone. Ghobadi shot No One Knows About Persian Cats on the sly, taking the admirable but probably necessary risk to highlight music the government sees as a threat. In light of Jafar Panahi recent arrest, Ghobadi is afraid to return to Iran. The grave situation for creative people in Iran is no joke, and is probably the core reason for the film’s knee-jerk need for tragedy, but it does a great disservice to the otherwise unique Iranian film. As a document about the welling of rock music in Iran, No One Knows About Persian Cats is indispensible; as a dramatic excursion, it’s a trip not worth taking.

MnDialog: Twin Cities Film Log: A look into the near future!

Twin Cities Film Log: A look into the near future!

In this case, the future in now. Watching The Warriors last night at the Trylon was damn near perfect and that is just the tip of the iceberg. September and October look to be very good months for your inner film fan. Opportunities abound at the Trylon, Walker, The Heights, and even the Oak Street. I'm a shameless pimp for all four venues. Go over to MNDialog for the highlights.

Check out the upcoming stuffs here:

Trylon Microcinema
The Heights
Walker Art Center
Oak Street Cinema
Revolution Reel at Intermedia
Sound Unseen 10
Landmark Theater

Queer Takes at the Walker

Read my rundown of the Walker's film series Queer Takes in the Star Tribune here.

On the eve of Sacha Baron Cohen's blockbuster excuse to laugh at the gay guy comes a batch of films that not only acknowledges the audience's intelligence, but make the assumption that we are not homophobes. Crazy! The Walker's annual Pride Week film series begins tonight and runs through Thursday. Queer Takes: Standing Out starts out with a comedic bang and builds to the grand crescendo of a masterpiece. John Greyson's Fig Trees, screening Thursday night, is a work to behold. Visually stunning and cerebrally exciting, Fig Trees balances artistic experimentation with an authenticity to reality. It is completely unique and I can not stress enough that it is not to be missed. (It's free, for god's sakes.)