An internationally acclaimed Thai film director

At the relatively young age of 41, the distinguished Thai filmmaker Apichathpong Weerasethakul has emerged as one of the great film directors in the world. He has had the rare honour of winning three of the most prestigious prizes in the world of cinema. In 2002 his film Blissfully Yours won the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes film festival. Two years later his film Tropical Malady was awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes film festival. And in 2010, his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past won the top award at the Cannes festival, the most prestigious award in the world of cinema.

What is interesting to note in this regard is that while India is still by far the largest film producing country in the world, no Indian film director has yet been successful in winning this award.

Many film commentators have hailed Achipathong Weerasethakul as a brilliant filmmaker. In the British journal Sight and Sound a critic called him an unquestionbly original and brilliant film director .The same sentiment was echoed by such film commentators as James Quandt, Peter Bradshaw; Quandt wrote a book on Apichathpong's films.

Benedict Anderson, one of the greatest social theorists of our time, whose book Imagined Communities has attined the status of a classic,, and an acknowledged expert on Southeast Asia has called Apichathpong his favorite living film director. Having watched all of his five feature films I can say that he is a film director with unparalleled gifts and a distinctive cinematic imagination.

The question that we need to ask ourselves is how has this comparatively young filmmaker from Thailand been able to garner such extravagant claims from film critics and academics throughout the world. Within the short compass of this column I shall try to provide some answers

Apichathpong is not an entertaining film director in the conventional sense, and he is certainly not an easy filmmaker. He demands patience and concentration and a willingness to subject yourself to the powers of alternate realities. The adjectives that immediately springs to one’s mind when discussing his films are mysterious – elusive – enigmatic – dreamy – meandering - challenging – provocative - unconventional.

All these adjectives, I will argue, point to important aspects of his cinematic intentions. This was driven home to me by two experiences I had. Some months ago, I had to introduce Apichathpong’s latest award-winning film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past at a showing of the film in connection with a Southeast Asian film festival in the Academy for arts in Honolulu. And at the end of the film showing, I had to answer questions from the audience about it. It was a highly educated audience, but many of them found the movie somewhat elusive.

I had the same experience when I showed this first film, Blissfully Yours, in a graduate class on Southeast Asian cinema; the students expressed the view that the film, apart from being extremely, slow, was enigmatic. This is indeed a common reaction to Apichathpong Weerasethakul’s films. Apichathpong came from a middle-class family. His parents were doctors. They decided to relocate in a rural area rather than working in Bangkok. His love for the rural countryside was, consequently, instilled in him from young days. The curious conjunction of images from commercial television, popular films and the rural landscape and the belief systems of the peasants that find repeated and memorable expression in his films can be traced to this experience of his.

After having his early education in Thailand he went to the United States to study at the prestigious Institute of Arts in Chicago. There he was exposed to diverse western styles of art and filmmaking including surrealism which, judging by his five feature films seems to have made a deep and productive impression on his expanding imagination.

Apichathpong’s first feature was titled Mysterious Object at Noon and was made in 2000. It is an innovative film that shows the audacity of the director in seeking to extend the discursive and representational boundaries of cinema. This film represents a blending of documentary and feature films. In making this film, he took a voluntary crew to villages in Thailand in the North and South over a three years' period, and asked them to relate to a story about a disabled boy in wheel-chair and his teacher.

The narrative was structure along the lines popularised by surreralists in their Exquisite Corpses technique which was based on a parlour game in which each of the participants wrote a phrase in a sheet of paper and passed it in to the other where each contributed to the evolving narrative. Apichathpong who at one point in his life was impressed by surrealism no doubt was influenced by this technique in making his film.

Quite apart from the interest in stylistic innovation that the director has chosen to stress, the film merits close analysis in terms of content as well.

It focuses on a segment of society that is dispossessed and disenfranchised – farmers, fruit- sellers, The film constitutes their collective narrative about the disabled boy and his teacher. When placed against mainstream Thai films with their strong emphasis on melodramatic narration and excessive emotion, this is indeed a film that signifies a desire to strike out in new directions.

Apichathpong’s second feature film was ‘Blissfully Yours. Made in 2002, and it won for him the prestigious Un Certain Regard prize at the Canes film festival. This film deals with the relationship between Min, a Burmese illegal immigrant, Roong a factory worker, and Orn a middle aged woman. The film consists of two parts, a common enough structural feature in many of Apichathpong’s films.

The first part takes place in the city. Min suffers from am unidentified skin rash, and Orn takes him to the doctor. But the doctor cannot help him as he is not allowed to speak fearing that his true identity would be exposed.

Jungle

The second part of the film takes place in the jungle. Min and Roong take the day off and go on a picnic to the jungle area. They drive to the countryside which in meticulously depicted in the film. Orn, also goes out to the jungle; they are involved in an amorous relationship. His motorcycle is stolen and he chases the thief. Orn walks in the jungle and ends up in the area where Min and Roong are making love.

These are the incidents that make up the narrative discourse of the film. It’s not so much the inherent narrative power that marks the film as the way it is presented cinematically in terms of dazzling visual and aural registers. The slow pace, the long takes, minimal use of music, heavy emphasis on environmental sounds and so on that characterize his other films are in evidence in this work as well.

The jungle, as I will explain later, is a central topos in Apichathpong’s films and it carries a heavy freight of meaning for him. The long trek through the jungle with his tall trees and thick undergrowth is represented in minute detail.

Apichathpong Weerasethakul’s third film was Tropical Malady. It generated a great deal of international interest as it won the coveted Jury Prize at the Cannes film festival. This film, too, consists of two parts. The first part deals with the relationship between a soldier and a young country boy – the solider is called Keng and the country boy Tong.

The film opens with a group of Thai soldiers having found a corpse are making arrangements to transport the corpse from the jungle to the city. They stop for the night at a small farm, and there the soldier Keng happens to meet the country boy Tong. Tong works in an ice-factory in town and a relationship begins to develop between them. Keng consents to teach him how to drive.

They also go to a clinic together to take care of Tong’s dog who I dying. Keng also spends time in the farm. The first section comes to a conclusion with the news that a monster from the jungle is slaughtering cattle. And Tong enigmatically leaves and blends into the night.

Lonely soldier

The second section is titled A Spirit’s Path. A lonely soldier is sent to the jungle to locate a lost villager. The soldier, obviously anxious and scared as he goes about his search in the jungle is confronted by the spirit of a shaman who appears to be decrepit. In the encounter between the two, he is taunted and bruised. A monkey on a tree tells the soldier cryptically that his destiny is with the man-beast. He lays a trap at night and awaits the outcome; he succeeds only in shooting a cow.

The film ends with the soldier looking for a strange tiger perched on a tree, The film consists of bizarre incidents such as these. He takes us into a strange world where the boundary between man and beast, humans and ghosts, rationality and irrationality seem to dissolve. What is interesting, and also in many ways demanding is the connections the director seeks to establish between these various incidents, and especially between the first and the second part.

Tropical Malady is a beautifully shot film. The mystery, the enigma, the poetry and the life of the jungle that Apichthpong is so fond of are clearly in evidence. This is a film that compels the proactive participation of the viewer in piecing together the incidents and giving a discernible shape to the story.

That is why some viewers find it too difficult. The work of Apichathpong Weerasethakul will be less difficult to comprehend if the audiences have a reasonable understanding of his interests and agendas as a filmmaker. The way he dissolves the mutually threatening proximity of the real and the unreal through the depths of folk imagination is particularly important in this regard.

His fourth film made in 2006 is called interestingly Syndrome and A century. Almost all of his films bear intriguing titles – Mysterious Object at Noon – Blissfully Yours – Tropical malady – Syndrome and a Century – Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past.

This film which is a tribute to his father and mother is in many ways based on their life experiences. There are three intersecting stories in the narrative discourse that take place over period of four decades. A shy, charming doctor begins work in a Bangkok hospital. There he chances to meet a doctor whom he finds incredibly attractive. Unfortunately, there is a rival for her affections. This is the kernel of the first story.

Monk

The kernel of the second story is the arrival of a monk in the hospital to meet a dentist and the way a close and intimate friendship develops between them on the basis of shared interest most notably that of music. The kernel of the third story consists of a young intern who comes to the hospital and is revolted by the people who are inquisitive about him. He retreats to a different part of the hospital where he discovers a group of patients from unnamed melodies

As in Apichathpong’s other films, Syndrome and a Century consists of two parts. The incidents in the first part of the film take place in a rural hospital while those in the second take place at the Bangkok Medical Center.

The director says that his ‘film is about transformation.’ One can indeed gloss the term transformation in diverse ways. What is interesting about this film is that the characters and dialogue in the first half of the film are repeated in the second half; however, the settings and outcomes are different.

Apichathpon’s signature features such as the slow pace, reflective camera, non liner narrative, quality of enigma that permeates human life are strikingly present in the filmic text. Is the repetition of characters and dialogue in some way connected to Thai Buddhist understandings of life? This is indeed a question that is worth pondering.

The fifth that Apichathpong Weerasethakul made was released in 2010, and it won the most prestigious award in the film world, the top prize (Palme d’Or prize) at the Cannes film festival. Here, he is in full flow displaying a mastery of diverse facets of creative filmmaking. This film deals wit a man who is dying of a kidney disease.

Wife

His sister-in-law, a young nephew and an attendant who is from Laos are taking care of him. One night as they were having dinner the ghost of her diseased wife, Huay arrives on the scene to advise him on how to face the ordeal. His long lost son also returns in non-human form, that of a monkey-spirit.

He is presented as a hairy beast with red glowing eyes. All these sound weird and unbelievable. However, the film reconfigures these incidents which are presented normally either in comedic terms or aspects of horror in a matter of fact way. That is what makes the experience different and enticing. Contemplating the reasons for the tragedy that had befallen him, Boonmee treks through the jungle to a mysterious hilltop cave the place of birth of his earlier life.

Even a brief summary of the main events of ‘Uncle Boonmee’ should make it plain that the narrative consists of extraordinary events.

The strength of the film lies in the way that the director has been able to convert the incidents he had in mind into cogent cinematic images. It is in turn humorous, elusive, magical and tender. The idea of a border zone is central to the animating concept of the film – the border between life and death, man and beast, humanity and nature, past and present figures so prominently in the narrative discourse.

Rhythm

The camera work, the pace and rhythm of the film, the rich soundtrack contribute to the sublimity of the film, and one senses that a Buddhist sensibility seems to be shaping the feel of the film. Apchathpong is a filmmaker who believed that one function of cinema is to present alternate realities in a credible and cogent manner; he certainly has been able to achieve this objective in this film.

There are a number of features in Apichathpong’s film that merit close consideration. They give his work its indubitable resonance and the vitality that discerning viewers find so attractive. In this regard, I wish to highlight eight of them. First, the way he constructs his narrative discourse in his films invites focused attention.

There is a recognisable continuity between his films in the way he constructs his narrative discourse. Apichathpong abhors linear narrative; for him it simplifies and reduces the complexities of human interaction. His narratives are convoluted, meandering, and circular and demand the patient participation of the viewer.

He does not spoon-feed the audiences; to change the metaphor, he wants the viewers to connect the dots themselves. In addition, in almost all his films there is a bifurcation in the narrative – it is divided into two parts. We saw this in films such as Blissfully Yours, Syndrome and a Century, Tropical Malady and Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past. This division, I submit, is highly functional.

One way of describing the second part in his films is by invoking the term put into circulation by Jacques Derrida – supplement. By supplement he referenced the way the original text is both reinforced and subverted by the newer addition. This is precisely what happens, I believe, in Apichathpong’s films. At one level, the second part of the film, in complex and unanticipated ways, extends the narrative thrust of the first part; at another level, the second part interrogates, and even subverts, the narrative intent of the first part. Indeed, it is this tension that energizes Apichathpong’s filmic experiences and promotes innovative frameworks for alternative readings of the world. What is interesting to observe is the assured conviction with which the director pursues his perilous goals.

Realism

This, of course, involves the conceptual displacement of the standard understanding of realism that is anchored in our fixity of habit. second, one objective of Apichathpong Weerasethakul as a filmmaker, I wish to contend, is to capture and project events and phenomena that ordinarily lie below the threshold of representation.

This desire gives his films their characteristic enigmatic quality. In addition, he is committed to representing the deeper world of imagination of peasants in Northeast Thailand (Isaan), from inside.

He enters into the folk imagination, as few other Asian filmmakers have, and opens a fascination world of man, beast and spirits. This is clearly evident in films such as Tropical Malady and Uncle Boonmee. Animal imagery and symbolism figure prominently in Apichathpong’s films just as they form an essential ingredient in the Japanese filmmaker Kon Ichikawa’s work.

However, there is a clear difference in their films in the way in which animals are evoked and connected to the narrative flow. Normally Thai filmmakers represent peasant experiences, folk tales and myths through the optic of a middle-class urbanite; Apichathpong, on the contrary, wishes to represent the experiences of peasants and their myths and legends from the inside. This is his strategy towards uncovering the possibilities of a fuller world.

Soundtrack

Third, the imaginative use of the soundtrack by Apichathpong Weeasethakul in his films invites closer attention. Film is generally regarded as a visual medium. This is true so far as it goes; however, we need to keep in mind that the soundtrack can be equally powerful and a vital part of the meaning-system of the film. This is clearly evident in Apichathpon’s cinema. In his films, very often, the anxieties of the mind and the impenetrability of the surroundings are signaled by sound.

The careful and emphatic use of sound marks his march towards radical representational freedom. For example, the way the nighttime jungles are portrayed in films like Tropical Malady and Uncle Boonmee testifies to this ambition of his. In these films the sounds of the jungle which are caught meticulously become a vast signifier of the mysterious worlds, both inner and outer, we inhabit. Fourth, the way he locates the action of many of his films in the jungles of Northeast Thailnd is important. Here he re-captures the sights and sounds of the jungle in all their diversity and complexity to conjure up a world that is simultaneously beautiful and terrifying.

In Thai cinema in general there is an obvious binary established between the city and the nature – the city is the site of moral decadence and nature a source of existential renewal. In the case of Apichathpong it is much more complex; nature or the jungle serves as location, a mind set, a tone, a symbol of the darker and hidden forces of the human mind. In other words, it becomes a multi-faceted trope.

Animals

Apichathpong, speaking about the importance of the jungle with its tall trees and thick undergrowth, with all kinds of animals and insects and spirits, remarked, ‘Emotions are revealed by the jungle, it becomes a kind of mind-scape.’ He captures through the cinematic apparatus the power of the jungle; here artifice does not sabotage but reaffirm authenticity.

Fifth, Apichathpong with his preference for unconventional stories, experimental narrative structures, occupying a border zone where nature and culture, past and present, real and unreal, presence and absence, interact freely is working towards a counter-cinema. This is amply demonstrable through comparisons with mainstream cinema. His films are not very popular; however, there is a segment of Thai society that appreciates his work. His ambition to go beyond the reach of the capacities of cinema as standardly understood reinforces this point.

Fascinating

Apichathpong displays an unconcealed interest in subverting established categories, received valuations, conventional boundaries, and common expectations in order to construct a counter-cinema. He is never willing to simplify himself in the interest of achieving mass popularity; by the same token, he is not willing to allow spectators to simplify themselves either by not actively participating in the presented cinematic experience.

Sixth, the way he seeks to re-map the complexities of the human body is indeed fascinating. The bodies in his films are diseased, dying, dead, locked in memories, transformed into animals and ghosts and spirits; in other words he in interested in the mobility of bodies. The idea of transformation that he values so highly finds powerful articulation in the self - transformative powers of bodies.

To be sure, all filmmakers focus on bodies; what is distinctive about Apichathpong’s work is the way culturally-coded inscriptions of bodily activities fuel the narratives in unexpected ways. Seventh, the way Buddhism has played an important role in his filmmaking deserves careful unpacking. The influence of Buddhism operates at a number of different levels of cinematic apprehension. The story of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past was told to Apichathpong by a Buddhist monk. His narratives contain Buddhist topoi such as impermanence (aniccha), moral retribution (karma), pervasive suffering that marks worldly existence (dukkha), complex networks of cause and effect (patichcha samuppada), rebirth (punabbhava) etc.

Notion

These notions are, to be sure, mediated by popular beliefs prevalent among Thai peasants so that they are presented not as scriptural injunctions and discourses but rather as facets of day to day living. Going beyond these, one can establish a fruitful connection between Buddhist thought and the philosophy of filmmaking endorsed and advanced by Apichathpong. This aspect is vitally connected to visual perception and consciousness and the idea of non-self that the Buddha expounded.

In his films Apichathpong Weerasethakul does not posits a stable self but instead a self in flux; he does so through his relentless emphasis on the capricious nature of visual perception. He conceives of the self as a locus of transformation. This line of thinking ties harmoniously with Buddhist approach to the self and existence.

Apichathgpong, in his work, has sought to disaggregate the self, uncover its masks while placing great emphasis on the idea of consciousness. He believes that only by being filly conscious is one able to realise the full freedom afforded to oneself. This connects interestingly with Buddhist thought.

The Buddha focused on the stream of consciousness as a way of negating the metaphysical notion of self which was decidedly immutable. In order to discard the metaphysical self, the Buddha called attention to the importance of examining sense experiences.

This sense experience is the consciousness that I referred to earlier. The Buddha’s theory of the twelve spheres or ‘gateways’ (ayatana) underscores this. Apichathpong is interested in dismantling the immutable self and underscoring the salience of consciousness through his cinematic art. For him, the inability to grasp the true contours of one’s own consciousness is always a troubling awareness.

This approach of Apichathpong incarnates the Buddhist vision of self and the world. In this sense, one can discern a similarity between Apichathpong’s art of cinematography and Buddhist thought.

Eighth, it is generally believed that Apicathpong Weersethakul is a metaphysical filmmaker who has little or no interest in matters political and social. Nothing could be further from the truth. If one reads his film carefully one would recognise the falsity of this fairly widespread notion. In films such as ‘Blissfully Yours’ and ‘Uncle Boonmee’, one can see the emphasis given to migrant workers. In the first film Min is an illegal migrant worker from Burma and in the second the male nurse is a young man from Laos.

His sympathies are with the migrant workers. He calls on society to account for its blatant injustices and unpardonable complicities. In addition, in Uncle Boonmee the protagonist reminisces and is contrite about his involvement in political violence in the past. In ‘Mysterious Object at Noon’, the narrative focuses on the plight of the dispossessed – farmers, fruit vendors and so on. Apichathpong is deeply interested in the idea of the nation as an imagined community (as formulated by Benedict Anderson) and the problematic nature of productive citizenship. It is hardly surprising that Apichathpong is a great admirer of Anderson.

Themes

Apichathpong Weerasethakul is an auteur in the sense that modern film scholars use this term - that is to say, he believes that the director is the author of a film. In terms of themes, styles, technique, visual composition, tone, aural registers his films bear his distinct signature. These films cannot be anyone else’s but his. Many critics, both local and international, find it difficult to identify a suitable analytical context in which to locate his unique body of work.

His films are excessive, enigmatic, playful, sensuous, exacting, and provocative. His cinematic imagination is seeded with the anxieties and pleasures of border-crossing – borders manifold and inhospitable. It is my conviction that he favours an aesthetic of mergence. What this aesthetic of mergence points to is the incessant interflow between nature and culture, real and unreal, past and present, emptiness and fullness, presence and absence, mysticism and rationality. This aesthetic, I would argue, offers a useful key to unlocking the riches of Apichathpong’s cinema.

Apichathpong is the kind of filmmaker from whom young and aspiring filmmakers in Sri Lanka can learn a great deal. His films are available as DVDs. What he challenges us to do it seems to me, is to extend the boundaries of cinematic representation through an admixture of the power of imagination, innovative rational thinking and empathy for human beings.

The way he interacts with, responds to, and offers alternate readings of, the world deserves careful study.