Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 4:16 pm 
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The director's first solid feature in four years revisits themes, quietly

Justin Chang's description of Cemetery of Splendor in Variety as "eerily becalmed" might go for most of the former Cannes darling's work, but it seems to have less going on in it than previous outings such as his 2004 Tropical Malady, 2006 Syndromes and a Century (2006 NYFF) and 2010 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010 NYFF), though viewers of these earlier films will get a sense of déjà vu. Events this time center around a rural hospital (converted from an old school) filled with patients, former soldiers, afflicted with their own "tropical malady," a mysterious sleeping sickness; Syndromes was set at several hospitals (a reference to the filmmaker's own "past lives," since his parents were doctors working in hospitals at his home town). Syndromes ended with a large outdoor aerobics class; such a class is featured again here. In all these films, there are visits to spirits and nether worlds; Uncle Boonmee is the most spectacular of those, which helps explain why the director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (nickname "Joe") won the top prize at Cannes that year.

This time, as Mike D'Angelo said in his Cannes report for The Dissolve, there is more for fans who like Joe's penchant for dwelling on the past and less for those, like himself, who like him for his ability to create moments that are "mysterious and enchanting." Here, D'Angelo says, there are a couple of visually magical things -- he notes the colored lights used to attempt to cure the patients of their sleeping sickness and a cloud-filled sky slowly invaded by a giant paramecium -- but for the most part the film focuses on "the glories that once existed in what’s now a drab location," which people sort of sit around and talk about.

The main actors here are Joe regulars. Jenjira Pongpas Widner is Jenjira, a version of herself, a woman with a leg-length differential and crutches who's a volunteer at the sleeping soldier's hospital, located in the country near Joe's hometown, Khon Kaen. She tends to a young soldier called Itt (Banlop Lomnoi, of Tropical Malady), who becomes a sort of pet and protégé when he begins waking up in the afternoon and going out with her. She tells Richard about Itt. Richard (Richard Abramson), who appears in person only once, is an American former military man who has met Jenjira online and has come to Thailand to live with her. Itt seems to be inhabited by the spirits of kings who once roamed the region around the hospital, now being bulldozed, perhaps for a fiber optic network. So Itt, who also speaks to Jenjira through a young mind-reader called Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), can recall past lives, like Uncle Boonmee.

True, Joe has "still got it": he pursues his predilections with the conviction and style of an auteur. Even as his slow-moving style and penchant for the long-held static shot make for frequent longeurs, I feel curiously at home with his relaxed, light-hearted characters and their high-pitched Thai voices, and with his instantly recognizable way of framing exterior shots, his delicate sense of color and light, and his offbeat, slightly crazy passion for the folklore and spiritualism of his country and his willingness to use all his considerable cinematic gifts to depict and embody them. But this film, compared to Joe's other ones, has more telling than showing. As Justin Chang puts it, Cemetery of Splendor lacks "the jungle-feverish exhilaration of the filmmaker’s greatest work."

Cemetery of Splendor, 127 mins., debuted at Cannes May 2015 with French theatrical release 2 Sept. An AlloCiné press rating of 4.3, amounting to a rave, notably from Cahiers du Cinéma and Les Inrockuptibles along with Le Nouvel Observateur, Libération, and L'Express, shows that the French critics remain the most faithful of fans, though Le Monde found Cemetery less involving than previous works. Festivals where it's shown or will show (as of Sept. 2015) number a dozen or so, including Toronto and the New York Film Festival. It was screened for this review as part of the latter, which will be its US premiere.

It has been picked up for US distribution by Strand Releasing -- which releases it Fri., 4 Mar. 2016 in NYC at IFC Center and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. In addition 4 Mar. Apichatpong's previously unreleased 2012 feature Mekong Hotel will also open at IFC Center for a theatrical premiere engagement with a retrospective of the director's earlier work preceding the opening of the two new films. For more details on Mekong Hotell and the retrospective see: http://www.ifccenter.com/series/mysteri ... asethakul/

Limited US theatrical release 14 Mar. 2016. DVD and Blu-ray 28 Jun. 2016.

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