Damn uncle boonmee streaming on netflix. Really wanted to see it on the big screen but it didn't come here.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/life/Cannes-checks-in-to-Mekong-Hotel-30180321.html

"It's going to be an exchange of ideas, of images, of ... I don't know. It's like a game for me: the river, the pigs and Tilda Swinton."

I don't really get the huge deal round Uncle Boonmee... I mean, it was a very good film and all, but after having seen Tropical Malady (and loving the hell out of it) I felt like this was just Weerasethakul repeating himself in a less inspired film. I also find it hard to believe that was the best movie in the Cannes competition that year.

Seriously, the first half hour of Tropical Malady was kinda stupid I guess (although maybe it's just cause it reminded me of shitbag Happy Together that I thought it was stupid). But the second half of that film was just one long ride of awesome with no looking back. One of the best movie experiences of the past year for me. Wonderful. Uncle Boonmee did not come close, although the red-eye monkeys were really fucking awesome.

I see your point a bit about Boonmee and Tropical Malady being similar. Although to me there's more than enough individual content in them to make them stand on their own.

I do disagree with you about the first half of Tropical Malady, but seeing as I just finished the film, it's a bit tough saying why. I guess I just enjoyed the contrast created by the two halves; it almost felt like I was using different parts of my brain to process each. The first one had a myriad of somewhat complicated social webs and behaviours, whilst the second one was primal and without many explicated motives for the action. I'm trying to think of possible thematic overlaps between them, and I think the key is in the quote in the beginning of the film, but I can't say for sure yet. Perhaps the first part is showing how we've tamed and taught ourselves to go against our primal animalistic natures, and the second one would be showing the battle between this more evolved human side of ours and the animal one - the one with a soul and memories and the one without. Perhaps perhaps

I'm actually surprised you didn't like the first half of tropical malady tm, to me they are both equally great in what ever respective realm they're coming from. To me the first half is one of the best gay love romances I've ever seen, makes Brokeback Mountain seem childish.

Your reading is a fine one smallows, as that seems to be the most reasonable explanation to connect the two halves (not that a connection establishes artistic intention in the first place).

For me Apichatpong's films yield better results when they are not dissected for explanations. He is my favorite modern filmmaker because of the kind of viewer I tend to be, passively letting the images and sounds go through time, but feeling every moment of them intensely. He is the most cinematic filmmaker today for me in that if one were to translate what you experience in watching his films into words, one would come out with complete rubbish. Like music, his films are best viewed with absolute clarity in mind and vision. There really is no logical or dramatic reason we should be gazing at a hospital air pipe vent or slowly moving around a statue in Syndromes and a Century, but my god, those happen to be sequences that I can just feel in the very depths of my bones, more so than any murder, breakup or any other contemporary Hollywood climaxes. It's very intuitive on how he creates, but I really do think he is precise about what he shoots. Unlike Malick who tends to be uneven at times, Joe follows his impulses to its utmost potential before he goes on with the next one. Watch how timely and precise all of his cuts are, like a musician holding a note and waiting for the exact moment to strike the next one. Totally in the tradition of Tarkovsky in this aspect.

I think a lot of his detractors aren't against films in general that cannot hold up to scrutiny, as there have been a lot of fans and non-fans of this type, but for me it is simple. What ever he is putting up in front of me he feels and I feel it as well, and that is all that matters.

Yeah, good stuff Smallows. I like how you found the power of the second half deriving from contrast with the first half. Although I must say that the last shot in the first part of the film is one of my favourite things about the movie. Phantom rides always give me boners and this one just hit home like none have done since 2001 (the whole stargate sequence).

And wanta, much as I like your appreciation of AW's cinema here, I find it did not apply to Syndromes for me. I can't say I disliked the film, but none of the images had a powerful effect on me. I did not search for logic, because like you say I would only be able to come up with rubbish. This is why I will also not say bad things about the film. All I can say is that I have no strong feelings one way or the other and I will take a break-up, a murder or a Malick film (how is Malick uneven?) over this any day of the week. That's not to say that I didn't love Malady and Boonmee, though. I guess it's really the pure jungle imagery that intrigues me, because those films are closer to nature, are linked to such a unique topography and you find it nowhere else.

And about the first half, Jake, I actually didn't dislike it, that was ill-phrased. I was just constantly reminded of Happy Together, which I hate, and that annoyed me very much. But it was quite a good gay romance, that's for sure.

Have you seen Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Three Times yet, wanta? I know it has nothing to do with AW's cinema, but they're both Asian and shit so that makes them the same in a way... I think you'd like this movie a lot. I did.

YES to all this. What I wrote earlier was a response to PBR's dissection of the two halves, and indeed, simply analyzing and explicating Apichatpong's films don't do them justice. The magic is in the marriage of his sense of rhythm and aesthetics. Like PBR mentioned, the jungle imagery especially is fascinating. It feels so real, so there; it's in the discreet sounds of the forest that constantly enforce the environment and its feel, the silent and subdued movements of the branches and leaves, and to me, especially in the green colors that to my eyes seem somehow more natural than in any other filmmaker's work.

joe's top 10

1. ‘The Unchanging Sea’ (D.W. Griffith, 1910)
2. ‘Luk e-san’ (‘Son of the Northeast’) (Vichit Kounavudhi, 1982)
3. ‘Women Workers Leaving the Factory’ (José Luis Torres Leiva, 2005)
4. ‘The Conversation’ (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
5. ‘Valentin de las Sierras’ (Bruce Baillie, 1971)
6. ‘Love Streams’ (John Cassavetes, 1984)
7. ‘Goodbye Dragon Inn’ (Ming-liang Tsai, 2003)
8. ‘Satantango’ (Bela Tarr, 1994)
9. ‘Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom’ (Pier Palo Pasoloni, 1975)
10. ‘Chelsea Girls’ (Andy Warhol, 1966)


http://mubi.com/lists/apichatpong-weera ... p-10-films