Once again, a small Thai film blew over Cannes Film Festival like a graceful lover. On Monday, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery Of Splendour (or Rak Ti Khon Kaen) was screened to a thundering 10-minute standing ovation in the Un Certain Regard section, where the film's elegant formalism and aching beauty, deeply rooted in the northeastern spirit and post-coup reflection, shook up the festival slumber.
The reception of the film was fervently positive — despite the likelihood that most non-Thai viewers would miss the subtle yet powerful allusions to present-day Thailand — and the excitement marked a midway high for the world's most influential cinema event, which continues until Sunday.
The trade paper Variety praised the film as "sublime", while website Screen Daily remarked that Apichatpong didn't "compromise his vision". Online, words like "masterpiece" pop up here and there.
Before the festival announced its line-up last month, it had been anticipated that Cemetery Of Splendour would be shown in the main competition of the 68th Cannes because of the director's credentials and because his previous feature, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, won the coveted Palme d'Or, the festival's highest prize. To the surprise of many, Cemetery Of Splendour went instead to Un Certain Regard, a sidebar programme considered less prestigious, though sometimes more adventurous.
"Fourteen years ago, I showed my film [Blissfully Yours] in this section. I was so new to Cannes then, and I didn't know about the protocol of the place," said Apichatpong prior to the screening. "We weren't sure what to do and we almost missed our own screening."
Blissfully Yours won the top prize of the section in 2001, and the Thai director's return to Un Certain Regard this year was a sign that he's still seeing himself down a path of new discoveries. That Cemetery Of Splendour was shown here, he said, made him glad "to still be considered among the fresh voices of cinema".
In a year where the films screening in main competition have so far yielded little excitement (see side story), Apichatpong's unique mix of candour and the avant-garde feels indeed fresh. In Cemetery Of Splendour, he gives us the duality of dreams and wakefulness that is equally lucid and lyrical.
Set in the director's Isan hometown of Khon Kaen, the film tells the story of Jen (Jenjira Pongpas Widner), a middle-aged woman, and a group of soldiers suffering from what seems to be an outbreak of sleeping sickness. To help dispel nightmares, a row of electric tubes with changing coloured lights are installed in a wooden hospital, giving the dusty provincial town a sci-fi glow. There is also a psychic woman who can see into people's past lives (she's bugged by those who want her to see lottery numbers instead) and two Lao goddesses who materialise to tell Jen that the hospital where the soldiers sleep is built on an ancient cemetery. The sleeping soldiers, the goddesses say, are actually fighting a thousand-year war in the spiritual realm.
Amid the enigmatic recollections and truthful beauty, it must be noted that this is also a film that reflects upon the current state of military-run Thailand in a gentle, civilised, yet clear and unflinching way. A perfect way for art to respond to the overwhelming sense of uncertainty — political, historical and personal — has been found here.
It's not yet clear when the film will be shown in Thailand. Cemetery Of Splendour is a Thai film in its scent, touch, as well as its physical and spiritual sensitivities, though it was financed solely by a group of international producers. That takes us back to the central question the film seems to ask: Are we in Thailand awake or sleeping?
Apichatpong is unarguably the dominant force from Thailand in Cannes, although he's not the only one. In the Director's Fortnight sidebar, another film about the malaise of the contemporary world is being screened. Arabian Nights is a six-hour, three-part Portuguese film by director Miguel Gomes that addresses the impact of economic difficulties in the country.
The film was shot on 16mm and 35mm by Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who has worked on each of Apichatpong's previous films.
Yet another connection between Cemetery Of Splendour and Arabian Nights is in the conceptual possibility of capturing the urgency of hope and despair of society in an imaginative and altogether strong, unwavering manner.
Part documentary, part fiction, Arabian Nights is told, like Schcherezade's 1,001 stories, through a series of loosely connected tales about laid-off workers, greedy bankers, selfish authorities, rural struggles, folk bandits and urban residents suddenly finding themselves impoverished. There are nymphs and sorcerers, and there are IMF officials babbling about financial poison. At Cannes, it is being screened as three separate parts, and while Gomes' droll eccentricities and righteous indignation drives the narrative, Sayombhu's cinematography provides it with a startling, immediate texture.
"I spent a year working with Gomes in Portugal," Sayombhu said before the festival. "We went around Portugal. Not just in Lisbon, but in the rural areas. We kept moving around, and we went to different parts of Portugal that I never thought I would get to see."
So far, Cemetery Of Splendour and Arabian Nights are two films in Cannes that breathe hope into the future of cinema as art and as social expression (and they both are not in the much-hyped competition). One film about luminous beauty, the other about the lost grandeur of an old empire. Thailand may be sleeping, but Thai artists are fully awake and busy at work.
MORE FROM CANNES: LESBIANS, LOBSTERS AND AUSCHWITZ
Halfway through the 68th Cannes Film Festival, we have had bombs, but not really a bang. Among the competition titles, three films have emerged as the critical favourites: Todd Haynes’ 1950s-set lesbian romance Carol, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara; Hungarian holocaust thriller Son Of Saul by Lazslo Nemes; and the bizarrely touching The Lobster, by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz. There are 19 films in competition, with Asian heavyweights — Hou Hsiao-hsein’s The Assassin and Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart — coming later in the week.
We’ll hear about Carol a lot at next year’s Oscars (the film will open in Thailand at the end of the year). Blanchett plays the title character, a rich, married East Coast socialite who begins an affair with a young store clerk (Mara). Director Haynes gives the mid-century US period an almost-fetishistic lushness that’s so captivating we can’t take our eyes off the screen, and while this is not his best work, the forbidden romance between the two leads is suffused with pathos and allure.
A different kind of romance takes place in The Lobster. In the near future, society values couples and condemns singles. People who are not married are sent to a luxurious hotel where they have to find a compatible partner in 45 days, or receive a punishment by being turned into an animal of their choice. Colin Farrell plays a man who escapes that hotel to join a band of militant singles who roam a forest, where he meets a woman played by Rachel Weisz. The problem is that even among radical singles, feelings are prohibited, and The Lobster becomes a clever satire of our superficial social interactions and courtship rituals. There is a chance that the film will have a Thai distributor (thanks to the presence of the two leads), although nothing is certain at the moment.
A film unlikely to open in Thai cinemas, but that has been firing up debate at Cannes is Son Of Saul, an intense, harrowing, disturbing film set in Auschwitz, particularly its gas chambers. Told exclusively from the point of view of a Jewish prisoner in the Sonderkommando — a group of inmates forced by the Nazis to do the grisly work of the camp — the film plunges us into the chaos of the genocidal industry and moral irony when Saul discovers the body of a boy he believes to be his son. The film has won praise for its technical brilliance, though questions have been raised about its manipulative technique and the way it uses one of the world’s most tragic massacres as a backdrop. You can even debate a theological point regarding Orthodox Judaism. Anyway, Son Of Saul is the title we’re going to hear a lot about in the months to come. Hopefully it may land in one of Bangkok’s film festivals.
On a different end of the spectrum, Cannes gave us one of the worst films in recent memory in Gus Van Sant’s The Sea Of Trees, in which Matthew McConaughey plays an American man who travels to Japan to kill himself in the “suicide forest” near Mount Fuji. There, he meets a Japanese man played by Ken Watanabe, and after they get lost at night, their suicidal mission turns into one of survival. Fake, poorly acted and with an unbelievably weak script, the drama inspired loud giggles when we were supposed to be touched. The bad news is we’ll see this one in Bangkok cinemas — and probably soon.
Cannes Film Festival runs until Sunday. We will have more on the Bangkok Post website.
A scene from Arabian Nights.
Rooney Mara, left, and Cate Blanchett in a scene from Carol.
Colin Farrell, left, and Rachel Weisz in a scene from The Lobster.
