Uncle Boonmee goes beyond talking animals
Chris Knight
Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010


This might not look too weird, but that’s just because he hasn’t turned into a hairy creature with glowing red eyes yet
TIFF

Three things you should know if you happen to meet Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It’s OK to call him Joe; he understands that his given name is a tongue-twister to many Westerners. It’s also OK to shorten the title of his latest film, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, to Uncle Boonmee. Again, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a bit of a mouthful.

And it’s OK if you saw the film and didn’t like it. Director Tim Burton and the rest of the Cannes jury may have loved it, but the polarity of audience response is on par with Earth’s magnetic field.

“There’s hardly any middle ground, which I’m really happy about,” says the 40-year-old filmmaker, in Toronto last week for the film’s Canadian debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. “It shows that the film has a strong personality. It shows that I’m not making films that please everyone. It’s impossible to do that.”

Weerasethakul’s movie tells the story of Uncle Boonmee, who is dying of kidney failure and moves to the Thai countryside to live out his final days. As death nears, he is visited by ghostly relatives: first his wife; then his son, who has transformed into a hairy creature with glowing red eyes.

This furry apparition is a reference to monsters in the Thai movies Weerasethakul watched as a child, he explains. “We have our own stream of cinema history.” And the eyebrow-raising sex scene between a woman and a catfish? “I have my own tribute to what we call royal costume drama, where there’s a story of a prince and princess with talking animals.” He merely had his animals move beyond talking.

There was an actual Boonmee, now deceased, the subject of a 1983 book called A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Weerasethakul started his film with the idea of dramatizing Boonmee’s life, but his research and interviews with the man’s sons didn’t provide enough detail. Instead, he drew on his own experiences (his father died of kidney failure) and Buddhist notions about the reincarnation of the soul and the mutability of time.

He also credits his pre-filmmaking education as an architect. “It really helped,” he says. “If I didn’t study architecture I might make different kinds of films.” In his opinion, buildings and movies both rely on a complex relationship between space, time and the viewer.

Uncle Boonmee represents the final work in a series of films and installations called the Primitive project. “Thank God,” Weerasethakul says with a sigh. “I feel like moving on.”

His next film will be a more overtly political look at life in the northeastern part of Thailand, which was also the setting for Uncle Boonmee. The country has been lurching from crisis to crisis for several years now, and Weerasethakul feels he has to address it. “With the political situation going crazy now, it’s impossible to ignore.”

Film Review: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2.5 stars)

 This divisive film by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, possibly for sheer weirdness. (The jury president was Tim Burton, after all.)

It tells the story of Uncle Boonmee, a man dying of kidney failure, who as his life draws to a close receives casual visits from the ghosts of his dead wife and long-lost son. The latter has the eyes of a Jawa and the body hair of a Wookiee, though this is apparently a reference to monsters in old Thai movies and not Star Wars. (Memo to George Lucas’s lawyers: Stand down!)

The film also contains the best woman/catfish sex scene in recent memory; and a bilocating monk — possibly one of Boonmee’s past lives, but maybe not. Described by the Toronto International Film Festival program guide as “a wondrous cinematic labyrinth,” its entertainment value will depend on how happy you are feeling lost.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is screening daily at the TIFF Bell Lightbox until Sept. 29. For show times, visit tiff.net.

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