Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015)

[feihong]

This has been the first recent movie I have really enjoyed since...Drug War? Inglourious Basterds? I guess I liked Johnnie To's Office last year, and Phoenix impressed me a bit. Nonetheless, the Weeraseethakul film moved me like no other recent picture. It seemed to restore poetry to the movies as part of what they can do. I can feel and see the anger in the film that others have mentioned––but there is also the perilous sense of desire in the film, born of pretty desperate circumstances, perhaps, but still present as a moving force in the world of the picture. I thought it was one of the more erotic films of recent memory––which might speak a bit to the lack of eroticism in recent movies, but also to the intensity of the erotic content on display. The ghosts of this film are more vital than so many living characters in so much recent film product.

[knives]

In a lot of respects this is Weerasethakul's best feature (a few of his shorts are clearly better), but it also highlights the limits of his voice by reducing his pieces to their most generic presentation yet. The story, and I say this as a positive, is his most straightforward and completely told one since Syndromes allowing his fantasy concerns and their religious baggage to function naturally and with confidence from the story. Beyond a few minor nitpicks this is the first time I can confidently say that there isn't any serious narrative problem present. Unfortunately in this perfect form it just becomes reminiscent of similar elements in HONG Sang Soo's work making me wish I was watching one of his dream sequences instead. Additionally there's not really much story here. You could cut out a good hour from the film losing only dull aesthetic filler. Most of the slow cinema shots just don't make sense in the context of the film and don't work well to either draw the audience or, as people in this thread seem to suggest, hypnotize the mind into a dream state. Some shots do work like at the end (which is amazing especially with that score), but most seem there just to get the film to a certain desired length. Even in terms of the sequences relating to the themes and story there's a lot of repetitive fat here. For example the sequence with the cream just feels like an empty repeat of the boner scene. There's honestly a great twelve to twenty minute short buried here, but it becomes an unbearable drag. Weerasethakul has improved a lot as an artist, but he's only reached the point where he's shifted from infuriatingly awful to meekly mediocre.

[zedz]

Some shots do work like at the end (which is amazing especially with that score), but most seem there just to get the film to a certain desired length.

In what Bizarro World does any filmmaker actually work this way? "Oh my lord, the latest cut only adds up to 113 minutes, and my numerologist told me it had to be 122 minutes!" If you didn't like the pace of the film, fine, but that's an asinine way to frame that particular criticism. Weerasethakul has made languorous films that last ten minutes, one hour, two hours - where's the evidence that he's padding any of them to get to a magic-number running time (and why does the magic number keep changing so drastically)? Maybe he just makes languorous films?

[knives]

Soderbergh's actually said that a lot of the techniques in The Limey were to boost the runtime so it has happened. Beside that I never called it a magic number. Just a desired length which could be arbitrary beyond pushing it to feature length. Also I'm not criticizing the film for being languorous which of course is a legit choice (and I think my posting history shows I can enjoy when done well). I am criticizing it for featuring many sequences and shots which have no thematic or narrative purpose. Particularly in the first half hour the film constantly shows these non-sequiturs that don't even work as a way of creating pacing like Duras' truck. They don't relax the film, I was thinking Herzog much more than Benning, but seem to only present images of different speeds without any apparent reason.

[Lowry_Sam]

For anyone in the San Francisco area, the newly re-opened MOMA is starting a film series in October:

Modern Cinema: Criterion Collection and Apichatpong Weerasethakul
October 7–23, 2016
Phyllis Wattis Theater

Co-presented by SFMOMA and the San Francisco Film Society, Modern Cinema is a new film series exploring the dynamic forces interacting between cinema’s past and present.

Tickets are $10 (member)/$12 & the lineup is completely from Criterion's already-on-disc, with the notable exception of
Black Girl with Borom Sarret (Janus Films) on Oct. 9 and the Apichatpong Weerasethakul titles (all prints for which come from Strand releasing, unless otherwise noted):

Mysterious Object at Noon (print from Cineteca di Bologna/Film Foundation) - Oct. 8
Mekong Hotel - Oct. 14
Shorts (no credits or listing) - Oct. 15
Syndromes and a Century - Oct. 15
Tropical Malady - Oct. 16
Cemetery of Splendor - Oct. 16
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - Oct. 23

The first screening (Oct. 6) Rashomon is the only one sold out so far. No mention of whether screening are Digital Prints (which I would assume) or not & I haven't yet been to the Phyllis Wattis Theater so I can't comment on the experience, but if you're interested in seeing some Criterion titles on the big screen here's an opportunity.

There's also An Evening with Apichatpong Weerasethakul on October 13 (no film), which I'll miss because I'll be on vacation & he also has an art installation piece at the museum too in conjunction with the series.

[chucktatum]

With that being the name of the screening series, would it be safe to say Criterion is releasing Weerasethakul's work?

[knives]

Given the description and the fact that all of the Strand releases are in print I doubt. They might have the rights to Mysterious Object, but otherwise they definitely don't have any of the features. Likely, from the description, they're showing criterion films he has cited as an influence.

[Werewolf by Night]

"Modern Cinema" is the title of the series, and they are running a program of Criterion films and a separate program of Weerasethakul films, and tenuously drawing some connection between them.

[Petty Bourgeoisie]

I watched Cemetery of Splendor on Netflix two nights ago. I had really mixed feelings. It was his typical brilliance, no doubt, but it didn't have the emotional impact of Tropical Malady or Syndromes and a Century. A three word review would be, brilliant but rote. I hope he stretches himself with this new film.