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#609 - Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010
An old man dying of organ failure starts to recount his past lives while in the presence of his loved ones, some of whom have changed radically.
It's very easy to set up a dichotomy between the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Picture in that both are prestigious awards that are annually given to what the voting bodies of the respective organisations feel is quite simply the greatest film that the preceding year has yielded. Though the colloquialism "Oscar bait" and variations thereof have seeped into the wider cultural consciousness to describe films where the content seems cynically calculated in order to win Academy Awards, I wonder if this extends to there being such a thing as "Palme bait". Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalise why I wasn't all that impressed with one of the most recent winners, 2010's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. It certainly had an intriguing concept in its tale of the eponymous character, a terminally ill Thai man whose carers (which include close family members) do their best to keep him alive through dialysis. The film distinguishes itself by introducing elements of magical realism as Boonmee starts to have some very surreal experiences, such as the repeated appearance of red-eyed human-sized monkeys (one of whom is apparently Boonmee's long-lost son). The line between fantasy and reality blurs considerably and occasionally gives way to stand-alone vignettes that feel like fairytales.
Unfortunately, Uncle Boonmee... just struggles to engage my interest. I certainly have to give it credit for maintaining a visual style that's impressive enough so that I don't totally tune out the film, but beyond that I don't feel any strong investment in what's going on. As a result, the film's visual style and the characters' in-universe approach to the more bizarre elements in it come across as the film's greatest strength as it segues quite readily from supposedly unremarkable weirdness into lurid fables. It's also a bit too slow for its own good at times, making you feel an awful lot of its relatively brief running time. I can't really fault the performances as the matter-of-fact nature of many of them in the face of such fantastic visuals or everyday events seems to be part of the intent, but that only means they contribute to the film's lack of a compelling nature. I get the feeling that there's more going on here than I may have picked up on so I would not be averse to a second viewing, but as it stands I'm more than a little let down by Uncle Boonmee... and the ways in which its measured pace gives way to tedium a bit too often for it to be a true stand-out to me.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010
An old man dying of organ failure starts to recount his past lives while in the presence of his loved ones, some of whom have changed radically.
It's very easy to set up a dichotomy between the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Picture in that both are prestigious awards that are annually given to what the voting bodies of the respective organisations feel is quite simply the greatest film that the preceding year has yielded. Though the colloquialism "Oscar bait" and variations thereof have seeped into the wider cultural consciousness to describe films where the content seems cynically calculated in order to win Academy Awards, I wonder if this extends to there being such a thing as "Palme bait". Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalise why I wasn't all that impressed with one of the most recent winners, 2010's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. It certainly had an intriguing concept in its tale of the eponymous character, a terminally ill Thai man whose carers (which include close family members) do their best to keep him alive through dialysis. The film distinguishes itself by introducing elements of magical realism as Boonmee starts to have some very surreal experiences, such as the repeated appearance of red-eyed human-sized monkeys (one of whom is apparently Boonmee's long-lost son). The line between fantasy and reality blurs considerably and occasionally gives way to stand-alone vignettes that feel like fairytales.
Unfortunately, Uncle Boonmee... just struggles to engage my interest. I certainly have to give it credit for maintaining a visual style that's impressive enough so that I don't totally tune out the film, but beyond that I don't feel any strong investment in what's going on. As a result, the film's visual style and the characters' in-universe approach to the more bizarre elements in it come across as the film's greatest strength as it segues quite readily from supposedly unremarkable weirdness into lurid fables. It's also a bit too slow for its own good at times, making you feel an awful lot of its relatively brief running time. I can't really fault the performances as the matter-of-fact nature of many of them in the face of such fantastic visuals or everyday events seems to be part of the intent, but that only means they contribute to the film's lack of a compelling nature. I get the feeling that there's more going on here than I may have picked up on so I would not be averse to a second viewing, but as it stands I'm more than a little let down by Uncle Boonmee... and the ways in which its measured pace gives way to tedium a bit too often for it to be a true stand-out to me.