Ceme­tery of Splendour

Some direc­tors would be polit­i­cal agi­ta­tors no mat­ter where and when they were born: lap of lux­u­ry or oth­er­wise, they’d find out where they were need­ed and bring their mag­ni­fy­ing lens there. Apichat­pong Weerasethakul (aka Joe), though, doesn’t seem like he’d nec­es­sar­i­ly take on the Haskell Wexler mod­el of his own accord. He was trained at the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, and some of his ear­li­est (and indeed, most recent) shorts are works of pure abstrac­tion; 1999’s Win­dows will look very famil­iar to any­one who once plugged a video cam­era into a TV and then tripped out on the result­ing crude 2001-cli­max spe­cial effects.

Cir­cum­stances, though, have dic­tat­ed a dif­fer­ent path, and con­text has always inflect­ed rur­al bliss-outs. In its final title cards, 2002’s Bliss­ful­ly Yours reveals that one char­ac­ter was a Burmese migrant deport­ed slight­ly there­after; 2006’s Syn­dromes and a Cen­tu­ry was banned in Thai­land because its final shot (of two monks play­ing fris­bee) was deemed an insult to the dig­ni­ty of Bud­dhism. In pro­mot­ing his lat­est film, Ceme­tery of Splen­dour, Joe has said that this is prob­a­bly his final film to be shot at home; life under the Thai mil­i­tary jun­ta has final­ly ren­dered work­ing freely a near-impos­si­bil­i­ty. Per­haps South America’s jun­gles – lush and green enough to enable con­ti­nu­ity with his arbo­re­al­ly ground­ed work – will be next.

First we hear the usu­al ambi­ence of coun­try crea­tures chirp­ing, then incon­gru­ous mechan­i­cal grind­ing. Repeat­ed­ly return­ing to his past and his par­ents’ pro­fes­sion as rur­al clin­ic doc­tors – a set­ting com­mon to Bliss­ful­ly, Syn­dromes and Uncle Boon­mee Who can Recall his Past Lives – Joe dis­turbs the loca­tion this time with an open­ing view from a veran­dah as trac­tors tear up the land­scape. The fol­low-up is no more reas­sur­ing: sol­diers with guns direct a camo-cov­ered truck. This hos­pi­tal is for mil­i­tary men whose nar­colep­sy errat­i­cal­ly comes and goes, often leav­ing them in extend­ed comas, which can serve as a start­ing metaphor for a polit­i­cal appa­ra­tus that’s unpre­dictable in its activities.

Joe’s reg­u­lar star Jen­ji­ra Pong­pas (please, call her Jen) is back once again, on call as a spir­it amanu­en­sis that helps comatose sol­diers com­mu­ni­cate with their loved ones. There is a plot, but it’s typ­i­cal­ly hard to sum­marise; per semi-usu­al, there are casu­al encoun­ters with ami­able spir­its in human form and a scene of group out­door exer­cis­ing to pep­py music. The major new visu­al addi­tions are the glow­ing tubes installed over the sol­diers’ beds; slow­ly tran­si­tion­ing from strong reds to intense blues and ver­dant greens, they’re sup­posed to aid sleep. Posi­tioned at equal dis­tances from each oth­er, they’re an eeri­ly shad­ed inter­nal for­est anal­o­gous to the one outside.

One jolt is entire­ly new to Joe’s styl­is­tic lex­i­con: while eat­ing lunch in the can­teen area, Jen sees a sol­dier who, imme­di­ate­ly after prais­ing the food, slumps straight into his plate in a sud­den attack of the sleep­ing sick­ness; the sud­den­ness and loud­ness of the impact he makes is almost a shock scare. The final shot of Jen’s unac­count­ably spooked face is the look of a vic­tim still pro­cess­ing; beneath this film’s typ­i­cal­ly warm and relax­ing atmos­phere, a nation­al and polit­i­cal cri­sis is more angri­ly appar­ent than ever.