December 13, 2010
Uncle Boonmee is a friendly, aging Thai farmer. Dying of kidney failure, he moves to his farm in the countryside to live out his days away from the oppressive city. With him are his sister-in-law “Jen”, one of his nephews, and a Laotian helper called Jaai.
At first (well, not during the 5-minute opening scene where a bull escapes its owners, and then is found standing calmly in the woods by a red-eyed Monkey Ghost, but after that), the events of the film suggest that this will be a not-overly-surreal film about the lives of a particular Thai family – or that we will, as the title suggests, find out about Boonmee’s past lives. In a way, it is a story about a particular Thai family, but on the other hand this is just as much a film about any Thai family – or any family, anywhere which has experienced love and death and spirituality and attachment; it’s about Thai culture and about the natural world, about reincarnation and the closeness of relation between humans and animals. It’s also possible that some of the scenes are of events from Boonmee’s past lives – but this film is as concerned with exploring all of these things as it is resolutely not really about any of them.
So what’s the point? Well, some of the audience appeared to surmise that there wasn’t one. I can see that it could easily have seemed to some that, whenever something interesting happened, it was completely bizarre, and unrelated to the story thus far. A good example is a love (?) scene between a talking catfish and a scarred Princess. Whether or not this is a snapshot from one of Boonmee’s past lives is almost impossible to determine; the only thing that suggests it would be is the title of the film. Also, it’s possible the catfish had a voice a little like Uncle Boonmee’s… but I was distracted (by the upending of any and all of my expectations by the way the scene played out) so I could be wrong.
I liked the film. I liked that it lacked dogmatic adherence to a conventional plot; I liked that the characters seemed to take almost everything in their stride, even the appearance of Boonmee’s long-dead wife at the dining table and that his son had married a monkey ghost. I even liked the slow pace of the film - and it really was slow. Minutes would tick by in which nothing ‘happened’ except that the characters climbed, slowly, down some steps into a cave. In silence. For no specific reason.
This really doesn’t take away from the film, though; it doesn’t feel incomplete. What it feels is different. The film had a profound effect on my mood that somehow bypassed any need to intellectually grasp what was going on. The long jungle shots were soothing, the parts of the film exploring human experience strangely pleasing – when Jen rolls down the car window to feel the wind on her face; or when she and Boonmee eat honey from his beehives with their fingers – and this calm, surreal, but familiar landscape provides an excellent backdrop for some of the film’s other preoccupations. The endurance of Boonmee’s affection for his wife came across more clearly in the absence of a demanding storyline.
So, provided you are prepared to spend a lot of time listening to crickets chirping, you might really like this film. I would also suggest a suspension of any concern about whether or not you got the point - after worrying for a while that I probably didn't, I get the feeling that’s not what’s important here.
At first (well, not during the 5-minute opening scene where a bull escapes its owners, and then is found standing calmly in the woods by a red-eyed Monkey Ghost, but after that), the events of the film suggest that this will be a not-overly-surreal film about the lives of a particular Thai family – or that we will, as the title suggests, find out about Boonmee’s past lives. In a way, it is a story about a particular Thai family, but on the other hand this is just as much a film about any Thai family – or any family, anywhere which has experienced love and death and spirituality and attachment; it’s about Thai culture and about the natural world, about reincarnation and the closeness of relation between humans and animals. It’s also possible that some of the scenes are of events from Boonmee’s past lives – but this film is as concerned with exploring all of these things as it is resolutely not really about any of them.
So what’s the point? Well, some of the audience appeared to surmise that there wasn’t one. I can see that it could easily have seemed to some that, whenever something interesting happened, it was completely bizarre, and unrelated to the story thus far. A good example is a love (?) scene between a talking catfish and a scarred Princess. Whether or not this is a snapshot from one of Boonmee’s past lives is almost impossible to determine; the only thing that suggests it would be is the title of the film. Also, it’s possible the catfish had a voice a little like Uncle Boonmee’s… but I was distracted (by the upending of any and all of my expectations by the way the scene played out) so I could be wrong.
I liked the film. I liked that it lacked dogmatic adherence to a conventional plot; I liked that the characters seemed to take almost everything in their stride, even the appearance of Boonmee’s long-dead wife at the dining table and that his son had married a monkey ghost. I even liked the slow pace of the film - and it really was slow. Minutes would tick by in which nothing ‘happened’ except that the characters climbed, slowly, down some steps into a cave. In silence. For no specific reason.
This really doesn’t take away from the film, though; it doesn’t feel incomplete. What it feels is different. The film had a profound effect on my mood that somehow bypassed any need to intellectually grasp what was going on. The long jungle shots were soothing, the parts of the film exploring human experience strangely pleasing – when Jen rolls down the car window to feel the wind on her face; or when she and Boonmee eat honey from his beehives with their fingers – and this calm, surreal, but familiar landscape provides an excellent backdrop for some of the film’s other preoccupations. The endurance of Boonmee’s affection for his wife came across more clearly in the absence of a demanding storyline.
So, provided you are prepared to spend a lot of time listening to crickets chirping, you might really like this film. I would also suggest a suspension of any concern about whether or not you got the point - after worrying for a while that I probably didn't, I get the feeling that’s not what’s important here.
