The film "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" was the winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, but there is a strong bipolar dispute over his evaluation and the reasons for the award, leaving aside the curious presidium judge Tim Burton. I am crazy about it, calling it a beautiful dream. In fact, this art film is indeed difficult to understand with logic, and more is to use the senses to drive the audience to complete a dreamy and mysterious reincarnation experience.
The film has a mysterious allegorical style, mysticism and surrealism, and director Apichatpong Weerasethakul put Thai philosophy and religion as well as his thoughts on Thai history and society into this film. , In fact, director Apichatpong's father also died of kidney failure, the same disease as the protagonist. Therefore, this film also expresses the director's gaze on "home" and hometown; on the other hand, he continues to insist on his own personal creation in this film. As an "image experimental artist", he has been in the film narrative language He continued to explore, and in the two-line parallel narrative structure of the film, he also discussed his long-standing pursuit of motifs such as dreams and desires.
Wet Rainforest and Neon Restaurant
The humid and warm rainforest has always been the most common space in Apichatpong's footage. From "Love Syndrome" to "Tropical Illness" to this "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives", in almost all of Apichatpong's works, there is a desolate and suffocating Southeast Asian jungle. He once said that he has love and fear for the dark, vague and mysterious primitive jungle, and he can also grasp the mysterious freehand side in this real space. It can be said that the jungle is the most suitable stage to express these stories. It is a dark place of despair and the source of life. It can be said that only this primitive and familiar jungle full of spirituality can trigger a Thai philosophical context. "Miracle" below. At the end of the film, there is a restaurant with cheap neon lights and electronic rock music. This is the place where Aunt Jane and her distant nephew, who is a monk, go out of their bodies. Washing up, unable to eat, but taking a bath in the room of Aunt Zhen, who is secretly affectionate, and then going out with her soul to eat in this slightly sexually suggestive place. Perhaps this is the director's discussion of the impact of modern society on Thai traditional culture, or it is out of the monk's catharsis, breaking the taboo to discuss the desire and nature of being a human being.
Cow and Catfish
These two intentions appear at the very beginning of the film and the dream of the male protagonist after seeing the ghost of his wife and the son of the incarnated monkey. Most viewers and interpretations believe that the two animals are Uncle Boonmee's past and future lives, respectively. This kind of Buddhist reincarnation thought of past and present lives is actually the value concept and cognitive system of the entire film and even the director of this film. At the beginning of the film, it implies that the buffalo in Uncle Boonmee's previous life first escaped from the reins and then was tamed. Here, the director seems to express the contradiction between life's desire for freedom and being controlled by the god of fate, which happens to be the same as Apichatpong's Growing up in the Thai cultural background, the result of value contradictions after being educated in the West. Moreover, the appearance of these several plots are all inserted into the linear time of the normal narrative. This insertion of the past and present life has largely destroyed the linear narrative structure of the film and made the film form a rupture. On the one hand, it challenges and destroys the traditional Western narrative techniques, and on the other hand, it creates a spectacle and aesthetic experience of magical reality through the description of local Thai cultural folklore and reincarnation.
ghost and monkey
The film's description of these two strange things is bizarre and playful. The ghost of the deceased wife suddenly broke into the dinner by fading in, while the son, who had been missing for several years, slowly walked down the stairs as a human monkey. This "bland" depiction of ghosts and demons is actually a concept of life in Thailand's native Buddhism for nature. They believe that gods, ghosts and animals are all forms of life, and for a long time, gods are justice. The stereotype of ghost as evil is different. In the interview, the director does not even attribute this concept to Thai Buddhist culture, but firmly believes that there are many dimensions in the real life in which he lives, and there are many invisible things. It is generally believed that the appearance of the ghost of the deceased wife is, on the one hand, inspired by Boomi's imminent death to "lead" her husband who is on the verge of death; common" concept.
As for the image of "human monkey", it is not the first creation of Apichatpong, but his historical investigation from the anti-communist wave in Thailand. At that time, the villagers were strictly controlled by the Thai army and white terror, and almost all young men fled into the jungle. , dared not go home for decades, and became a human monkey in people's mouth. In the process of searching for the human monkey, Boonmee's son combined with his soul and turned into a human monkey. This seems to be accusing the alienation and distortion of human beings in modern society, which also reflects the director's concern for some marginalized and forgetful ethnic groups. Humanistic care and surreal handling make the character's tragic even bigger. It brings new fear and compassion at the same time.
Cave and Blind Fish
At the end of the film, Uncle Boonmee and a few others walked through the mysterious and primitive jungle to the cave. The audience was like entering a death ceremony in the Garden of Eden, which contains all things, a death ceremony with a true Eastern meaning. Different from being called by the Lord and repenting for salvation in Western religions, it is silent, neither sad nor happy, it seems that the character is suddenly separated from his social identity, and forgets the karma and crimes of this life, and achieves a cycle of Buddhist culture. This process, in fact, seems so ordinary, as if from the very beginning life is just a return to solitude and rotation, just like death, just a journey of "going home". In the film, the hero Bumi's self-monologue before his death is also a good exposition of this theme based on the concept of life and death in Thai Buddhist culture: "This hole is like a womb. I was born here. Things from previous lives, I can't remember. All I know is, I was born here, I don't know if I'm a human or an animal, a woman or a man."
For the appearance of blind fish, in Apichatpong's films, the appearance of animal imagery is often symbolic. The protagonist in the film has such a monologue: "I have my eyes open, but I can't see anything, or I actually close my eyes." In the caves and pools, the blind fish without photosensitive ability is like a metaphor for the unknown afterlife. It is the suspicion and unknown of the product of the impact and fusion of Thai society and the Western world.
In "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives", the director transmitted the original local folk customs, myths, and legends, and tried to reconstruct the global audience's imagination of Southeast Asia's history and civilization in an unflattering way. The director's image style seems to be deeply influenced by the style of Taiwan's new wave director Tsai Ming-liang. The use of long lenses and telescopic lenses in the film can also better meet the director's requirement to look at all beings calmly and objectively. Equality" thinking and cherishing life.
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