Ceme­tery of Splen­dour – first look review

It must be tir­ing for assid­u­ous read­ers of the reams and reams of Cannes Film Fes­ti­val cov­er­age to hear that con­stant refrain of, ​“why wasn’t this movie pro­grammed in the com­pe­ti­tion?! It’s an out­rage!” Every­one, of course, has their rea­sons, and Thier­ry Fre­maux obvi­ous­ly had his when in came to nav­i­gat­ing the diplo­mat­i­cal­ly pre­car­i­ous ter­rain of dish­ing out com­pe­ti­tion berths. Apichat­pong Weerasethakul’s flo­ral ghost sto­ry, Ceme­tery of Splen­dour, played in the Un Cer­tain Regard strand, a plac­ing which in essence means the Thai mae­stro was not giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make it a dou­ble Palme d’Or win.

In answer to the ques­tion, would he have even won, it’s a dis­tinct prob­a­bly, as the man who sells him­self to the world cinephile com­mu­ni­ty as ​“Joe” has pro­duced yet anoth­er incan­des­cent and mys­te­ri­ous object which presents cin­e­ma as a tool which allows you to mer­ri­ly tran­scend the stric­tures of time and space. There’s noth­ing out there like it, so it instant­ly acquires top marks for orig­i­nal­i­ty. Apichatpong’s abil­i­ty to seek out the neon-trimmed pas­sage­ways which con­nect alter­na­tive real­i­ties – the past, the future, and play­ful fab­ri­ca­tions of both – to the con­tem­po­rary land­scape is what makes him one of the most excit­ing and qui­et­ly (so, so qui­et­ly) auda­cious film­mak­ers work­ing today.

In 2010 we were invit­ed to relive the past lives of one Uncle Boon­mee, and with Ceme­tery of Splen­dour, we’re giv­en a sim­i­lar oppor­tu­ni­ty, this time with an age­ing, club-foot­ed nurse­maid named Jen who has start­ed work­ing at a small hos­pi­tal ded­i­cat­ed to sol­diers suf­fer­ing from some bizarre form of sleep­ing sick­ness. This being an Apichat­pong joint, the slum­ber­ing, corpse-like patients lie with neon lights plant­ed next to their beds, which oscil­late through a spec­trum of bright colours which ​“the Amer­i­cans” assure will sub-con­scious­ly pen­e­trate their dreams.

This con­tex­tu­al back­drop is used a lit­tle more than a launch­pad for this always-intre­pid direc­tor to explore flu­id states of being. He makes 3D movies which don’t require glass­es, as they ele­gant­ly shift on three axis, up, down, left, right, for­wards, back­wards, untrou­bled about his mis­chie­vous desire to take the audi­ence on a trans-dimen­sion­al road-trip at a moment’s notice. One point to add is that this par­tic­u­lar hos­pi­tal is revealed to have been built on an ancient grave­yard which is pop­u­lat­ed by fall­en Thai kings. It’s a clas­sic hor­ror movie con­ceit (essen­tial­ly Pol­ter­geist) which is spun out in a way which runs entire­ly counter to expec­ta­tion. These regal ghosts are said to be the rea­son for all the sick­ness, only theirs is cer­tain­ly a more whim­si­cal­ly benign method of vengeance.

The idea of ​“haunt­ing” is a metaphor which returns over and over in Apichatpong’s oeu­vre, and this is no dif­fer­ent. The appari­tions are nei­ther good nor evil, they’re mere­ly visu­al reminders that the cur­rent moment in all its social and polit­i­cal com­plex­i­ty is entire­ly the prod­uct of these past lives. As peo­ple, we’re shaped by unknown, unseen and unfath­omable forces, and Apichat­pong doesn’t so much reveal these implaca­ble forces to us, more than make us feel them and under­stand them.

This film bulges with mem­o­rable images and stark­ly emo­tive com­po­si­tions. Each edit brings with it a sur­prise. The omi­nous sound design trans­forms the ordi­nary into the extra­or­di­nary, trans­port­ing the film to the high­est of genre-bend­ing heights. Joe locates images with­in images, but then has the where­with­al and vision to move the cam­era ever so slight­ly to reveal some­thing more – a mode which exem­pli­fies his the­mat­ic con­cerns of how exis­tence is the cul­mi­na­tion of var­i­ous co-min­gling real­i­ties, some of which we have to take spe­cial mea­sure to com­pre­hend and observe. At the end of the film, the spright­ly kings come and pay Jen a vis­it. They’re play­ing football.