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Offering a new take on ghosts, mysticism and matters of life and death, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is also a bit tedious at times. The film is also a critical darling due to its Palme d'Or win at Cannes last year. It’s easy to see how and why. This film is haunting, disturbing, and just too freakin’ weird at times to ever find a mainstream audience. While it is hard to determine the meaning of the matter, after wading through some of Weerasethakul’s Buddhist musings about eternity and families, the grossly meandering film certainly has its fair share of captivating moments.
At its most basic of levels, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is about a man named Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) who is suffering from kidney failure and decides, in his final few months, to bring his surviving family - sister-in-law Jen (Jenjiro Pongpas) and nephew Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee) - together for dinner and fellowship while he receives treatment from Jaai, a Burmese worker. Unexpectedly, the entire family receives ghostly visits from Boonmee's dead wife Huay (Nattakarn Aphaiwonk) and his long-lost son Boonsong who disappeared into the forest after photographing ghost monkeys and, eventually, turned into one.
Weird, I know. It gets weirder. The narrative digresses into a legend about an ugly water princess who has sex with a catfish and back to Boonmee’s story and, finally, onto Tong’s. It’s without structure and, at times, eerie in where it goes with the idea of past lives. It also doesn’t get any stronger than it’s opening twenty minutes. Lingering shots are pregnant with meaning and stay on target about two minutes too long, yet there is an epic spirituality kicking about throughout the film’s lengthy running time.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives isn’t so much of an experimental film as it is an unstructured meditation on how the past is always with us either as ghosts or as ghost monkeys with red beady eyes. The past is always there; guiding us. Photography is the film’s strongest and strangest point and with its cinematography being credited to three people - Sayambhu Mukdeepram, Yukorntorn Mingmongkon, and Charin Pengpanich – it is little wonder why so many critics celebrated this film.
Unfortunately, its sleepy story isn’t nearly as pretty. In fact, the weirdness of nature replaying past lives in conjunction with the present condition of Boonmee is a bit of a distraction.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is certainly a pretty looking film, it just isn’t as powerful as some say it is.
MPAA Rating: This film has not been rated by the MPAA.
