Winner of the Palme d’Or (best film) at the Cannes Film Festival, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives has become widely considered as one of the best films of our time, the summation of director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s languid, poetic style. Suffering from acute kidney failure, Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) reminisces about his life and is visited by the ghosts of his wife and son, finally embarking on a spiritual journey to his birthplace in a past life. Apichatpong’s radically meditative vision confronts us with big questions that don’t really have answers; therein lies part of its beauty, the other residing in intense visual and aural pleasure at every turn. “Magical, baffling, mirthful, sublime—it’s everything it’s cracked up to be.”—Chuck Stephens, Film Comment.
Appears in: Case of the Mondays
Genres: Drama
Other Films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Cemetery of Splendour
A hypnotic cinematic dreamscape unfolds in Thai master Weerasethakul’s new film, in which soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are sent to a temporary clinic in a former school. Perhaps a connection exists between the soldiers’ enigmatic syndrome and the mythic ancient site that lies beneath the makeshift hospital? The memory-filled space becomes a revelatory …