Sunday, July 24, 2011

Movie #266 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives *2011*

Apichatpong Weerasethakul.  That is the name of the director of this Thia film.  He is often times just refereed to as "Joe".

Uncle Boonmee is a quite, patient and often beautiful movie.  It is also extremely boring.  I hate to not like this movie, but I did not follow what was happening at all.  It is difficult for me to review, because I didn't understand most of it.  But here it goes:

Uncle Boonmee has diabetes and is dying slowly, but unpainfully or so it would seem.  He sees spirits while having diner and the other people at the table can see them too.  They all sit down to talk.  One is a ghostly image of a daughter maybe?  The other is in a form of a black bigfoot like creature with glowing red eyes.  Neither seem to pose a threat, nor does any of the conversation have much meaning.

Not much meaning is kind of a theme to the movie.  All the scenes seem like disjointed fragments.  If there is a through line to the movie I didn't catch it.  Let's see here, what else happened...

A woman has sex with a catfish.  People watch TV.  They go in a cave and empty Boonmee's pee drain.  There are more black big foots in the woods with glowing red eyes.  There is a section of still photos with soldiers and the black monster.  I have no clue what this movie was trying to tell me.

Joe would center his camera on nature and capture some beautiful images.  But he would leave it there for what felt like 5 minutes at a time without anything happening.  Now I am the type of guy who can watch and enjoy a slow film.  But at times this thing slowed to to an absolute stop. 

This is the type of movie that people don't want to admit not liking so they don't sound ignorant.  I don't care.  I did not like this movie.  I would find it hard to believe that there are many Caucasian, American's that would like this film.  I hope that doesn't sound too dismissive.  I give Uncle Boonmee ★1/2.

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