Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thai:Loong Boonmee raleuk chat) (2010) Afterlife visits A dying man in Thailand In his final days. His late wife, a missing son. Ever so casual, The two materialize At dinner's table. Mystifying glowing red eyes, Floating see-through shapes Inexplicably troubling. Reincarnation, He has lived many past lives. Once he was an ox, A catfish in a cave has Sex with a princess. Philosophical musings, Cultural concepts, Spiritual reflections, Communist concerns, Metaphysical ideas, Cosmological. Buddhism, Dualism, Eroticism, Illusions and memories, Confused? So was I. Excruciatingly slow, The beautiful shots, Intellectual ponderings, Few and far between. I like knowing characters. Abstract and distant, I could not connect nor care. I tried, really tried, Uncle who I won't recall. A dream? More like a nightmare. (Choka (長歌 long poem)) was a storytelling form of poetry from the 1st to the 13th century, known as the Waka period. The choka is an unrhymed poem with the 5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7...7 syllable format (any odd number line length with alternating five and seven syllable lines that ends with an extra seven syllable line).

"Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" —centers on the last days of its titular character— "Uncle Boonmee". Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the film is a meditation on death and the afterlife through the lens of Buddhist thought and philosophy.Though often difficult to decipher, the quiet pace and gentle touch of Apichatpong Weerasethakul film, "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives", makes for a spiritual and meditative film experience like no other. Uncle Boonmee is ill and his sister- in- law and her son visit as he becomes habituated to the new regiment meant to extend his foreshortened life. Moving closer to death, the barrier between the world of the spirits and that of the living dissolves, and Boonmee is met with his dead wife, his lost son, and of course, his past lives.Questions of the unknown seems to be at the heart of this film, especially the search for greater truth. Appropriately cryptic, fears and desires transform into a hyper-emotion. The excitement of discovery as well as the fear of an end blend into one. As Boonmee recalls past lives (and maybe even future ones), his identity becomes somehow more certain. We are not necessarily more privy to his mortal experience, but as his fragmented existence comes together he becomes more serene, and the audience does as well. Finding the meaning of life is futile, but finding peace in the journey is pivotal.

If you're looking for a film with no clear plot, unmemorable characters, minutes at a time of dead silence, boring dialogue, and a film that just all round is incredibly boring, you found it! Very rarely do I have a moment where I'm saddened by a thought that I may have wasted some time that i'll never get back. However, this film raises these emotions, having watched it I genuinely felt that I had wasted my time that could have been better spent doing LITERALLY anything else. Of all the things that I could get stuck up and angry about in this film - and trust me there are many things - it is the incredibly stiff and unconvincing acting. For the 113 minutes of this film, there's maybe 30 seconds, at the most, of any emotion that isn't like that feeling you have when you've just woken up but are annoyed at the fact you have to wake up. I'm sure this movie has some beautiful and profound statement of life and death or something like that but it is so heavily disguised in just plain boring nothingness that you can't be bothered to find the messages of the film. Good films create a partnership with the audience; i'll give you this many clues, and you fill in the gaps. Instead Uncle Boonmee gives the audience a bunch of meaningless unrelated scenes and expects them to do all the work, like a 1000 piece puzzle where none of the pieces actually fit together.The films jumps so erratically between genres, one minute it is a terrible film about the mundane life of a Thai farmer, the next minute it is terrible fantasy film about a talking catfish. The point of a film is to tell a story, but a story can't possibly be good if you can't follow or comprehend it. Harry Potter would have never been successful if every second chapter was erased. Uncle Boonmee is like looking after a really annoying 5 year old. It's hyper-actively running around everywhere, knocking over everything on every shelf, while screaming and giggling at the top of his lungs while you chase after it, picking up all of its mess. That is what Uncle Boonmee does to the viewer's brain. The films runs around making a mess while the viewer's brain runs around picking up all the scenes sprayed on the floor and tries to put them in some comprehensible order. The only consistency in Uncle Boonmee is that it is consistently crap for the whole 113 torturous, painful minutes.

I've been watching a fair few art house movies recently, and I've found that they tend to fall into a love/hate camp; there's little middle ground in this genre. UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES is a meditative Thai exploration of Buddhism that wastes its early promise by falling into a pit of endless boredom.The story begins promisingly enough, a tale of magic realism with some decidedly odd and unique offerings: the introduction of a primate from the jungle and an apparition at the dinner table set this up to be something really special. Unfortunately, after this point it feels like the writer gives up, and very little happens from this point in.Viewers are treated to an interminable scene of characters wandering through a cave and a head-scratching climax which the writer doesn't bother attempting to explain. It's all very frustrating, with much head-scratching and dull interludes, long segments that tell obvious stories and a cast who give anything but impressive performances. The characters remain cold throughout, as indeed my heart remained cold to this film's intentions.