Apichat­pong Weerasethakul: ​‘Steven Spiel­berg turned me on to mak­ing movies’

Ceme­tery of Splen­dour lay­ers up dream states and ghost­ly realms – some­thing that Thai direc­tor Apichat­pong Weerasethakul does rather well. Here we talk about his for­ma­tive inspi­ra­tions and his deep love of genre cinema.

LWLies: Do you remem­ber the first film you saw?

Weerasethakul: Yes, I don’t remem­ber the sto­ry, but I remem­ber a shot. It was a Thai movie, an action movie with heli­copters over the sea. The bad guys were on the heli­copter, throw­ing a lot of bank notes into the sea. They looked like birds.

Cin­e­ma can often become even more mul­ti-sen­so­ry in the memory.

Absolute­ly. It’s about free­dom too, the free­dom that comes with cin­e­ma. I felt suf­fo­cat­ed in that lit­tle town, so films can be lib­er­at­ing, a way of open­ing up a space. Look­ing back on when I was grow­ing up, I’m sur­prised that I could endure the sys­tem of edu­ca­tion. You have to stand up at eight in the morn­ing to sing the nation­al anthem. There were so many things you had to mem­o­rise. It was like a prison. They also play the nation­al anthem in the cin­e­ma before every movie.

There’s a cin­e­ma scene in your new film Ceme­tery of Splen­dour, where every­one stands but the screen is blank.

That’s kind of trib­ute to our old cul­tur­al habits. This is just one of them, but there are count­less codes that we have to fol­low. It comes into con­flict when you make movies, espe­cial­ly as I think movies are about free­dom. Not only that, but when you get to trav­el with a film and take it to film fes­ti­vals, it’s then that you realise what a crazy world you come from. When I went to Chica­go in 1994 – I was 24 – it was such a shock, it was like trav­el­ling into the future.

What was it that turned you on to mak­ing movies?

It was Spiel­berg. Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET and Close Encoun­ters were real­ly impor­tant to me. I didn’t think it’d be pos­si­ble, but I just want­ed to be involved in some way. When I dis­cov­ered exper­i­men­tal cin­e­ma in Chica­go, I found that a bet­ter fit with my nature – very per­son­al, and some­thing I could do by myself, in a dark­room, with a small group of people.

What lessons do you think you took from watch­ing all those Spiel­berg movies that you applied to your own films later?

It was about the dra­ma. Spiel­berg revived the old-style clas­sic Hol­ly­wood dra­ma, the way he moved the cam­era, it’s all very melo­dra­mat­ic. As a kid you were able to get it straight away, it wasn’t com­plex but it was very powerful.

He real­ly is a mas­ter manipulator.

Absolute­ly. When I was 12 or 15 it was just perfect.

I’m a big fan of AI.

I was already mak­ing films by that point and was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed. I real­ly like War of the Worlds though, it’s so grim and hope­less. Apart from the end­ing, there’s just so much fear and paranoia.

What have you seen recently?

I saw Moun­tains May Depart and The For­bid­den Room, which were amaz­ing. I saw The Mar­t­ian too. I’m real­ly into sci­ence and sci­ence fic­tion, so I’d read the book before. I was a bit dis­ap­point­ed as so much was cut out.

Did you see Interstellar?

Twice!

What did you think?

I liked the begin­ning. [Laughs.] It wasn’t as good the sec­ond time.

What is it about sci­ence fic­tion that you find so appealing?

It goes back to when I was a kid, so not some­thing I can real­ly explain. I liked a lot of super­nat­ur­al sto­ries and folk tales too, and sci­ence fic­tion feels like anoth­er kind of folk tale, the way it’s about the imag­i­na­tion and the invis­i­ble rather than the every­day. Ghosts and space­ships have the same effect.

Weren’t you plan­ning a sci-fi movie at one point?

That was a real­ly ambi­tious project called Utopia, but it was too expen­sive. It was set in the future, but the future accord­ing to old sci­ence fic­tion lit­er­a­ture. It was a kind of retro-future set in a snowy land­scape in the US. I want­ed to have the Star­ship Enter­prise stuck up a moun­tain, but it turns out it was a set. I want­ed to have all the old sci-fi actress­es play­ing sci­en­tists, mov­ing in and out of the fic­tion and real­i­ty of mak­ing those films.

Ceme­tery of Splen­dour is released 17 June.