21 reviews
Symmetry, Support and Sainthood
If only this dream sequence of a film came with a frame, a few moments of lucid guidance. A narrator, even for a brief opening and perhaps an explanatory note on the shift from rural Thailand to urban?
Without a background prep course, we are left wandering.
We are told by reviewers that this is a film about "Joe's" parents, his memories. Oh? Where? Not in the film. Not unless some lengthy Thai passage wasn't translated.
Please, Apichatpong, just a hint and the help of structure. It wouldn't have harmed the feel, the mood, the effect, in any way.
Are the two contrasting sections of the film, rural to urban, concurrent or a gap in time?
Some scenes, disassociated as they may be, are marvelous. The industrial process room, with a snakelike suction tube that would have done Dali proud. The steam, the fumes, whatever the smoky substance, swirling amid the machinery, I could smell the metal in the air.
We are also told by other reviewers that it's one of the Four Best films of the past decade in one poll and THE best in a poll of critics associated with the prestigious Toronto Film Festival.
Really? You can't be serious.
What it truly is? A film of beauty, of quiet, of sly humor, reflection, and a soundtrack of subdued accompaniment that seems to invite introspection in the viewer.
That's not all that bad, if you ask me. But we need a Sherpa beyond the simple edits.
If you do some research you'll find that the film was prohibited from exhibition in Thailand. Four scenes the censors thought objectionable, including a long, yet somewhat passive kiss and the sight of a monk playing guitar.
Strange, these moral critiques coming from country that for decades allowed its capital to become the brothel of the world.
I fear some of the reviews are thus political. And certainly I can't support censorship. But let's get a grip on the difference between support for the filmmaker and sainthood.
Without a background prep course, we are left wandering.
We are told by reviewers that this is a film about "Joe's" parents, his memories. Oh? Where? Not in the film. Not unless some lengthy Thai passage wasn't translated.
Please, Apichatpong, just a hint and the help of structure. It wouldn't have harmed the feel, the mood, the effect, in any way.
Are the two contrasting sections of the film, rural to urban, concurrent or a gap in time?
Some scenes, disassociated as they may be, are marvelous. The industrial process room, with a snakelike suction tube that would have done Dali proud. The steam, the fumes, whatever the smoky substance, swirling amid the machinery, I could smell the metal in the air.
We are also told by other reviewers that it's one of the Four Best films of the past decade in one poll and THE best in a poll of critics associated with the prestigious Toronto Film Festival.
Really? You can't be serious.
What it truly is? A film of beauty, of quiet, of sly humor, reflection, and a soundtrack of subdued accompaniment that seems to invite introspection in the viewer.
That's not all that bad, if you ask me. But we need a Sherpa beyond the simple edits.
If you do some research you'll find that the film was prohibited from exhibition in Thailand. Four scenes the censors thought objectionable, including a long, yet somewhat passive kiss and the sight of a monk playing guitar.
Strange, these moral critiques coming from country that for decades allowed its capital to become the brothel of the world.
I fear some of the reviews are thus political. And certainly I can't support censorship. But let's get a grip on the difference between support for the filmmaker and sainthood.
A film about the way that memory feels.
Here there is no story, no beginning or end. Snippets only of the universal experience of memory and feeling. So banal, so beautiful, the camera looks - often from a distance almost in reverie, at the smallest things in our lives. The camera is in fact a detached "third eye" - seeing what we don't focus on, remembering what we have forgotten. The actors (are they actors?) play out their small parts with humor, grace and and sincere naturalism.
One of a handful of directors using the unique language of film to its fullest doing what no other medium can do.
Touching, funny, hypnotic, complex and simple - Weerasethakul's signature is all over this film - his humanity, his recognition that the unexplainable is present in every ordinary life, that everything is worthy of our attention ...
One of a handful of directors using the unique language of film to its fullest doing what no other medium can do.
Touching, funny, hypnotic, complex and simple - Weerasethakul's signature is all over this film - his humanity, his recognition that the unexplainable is present in every ordinary life, that everything is worthy of our attention ...
Mysteries of reminiscence
- Chris Knipp
- Sep 29, 2006
- Permalink
Serenely magical
Funded by the city of Vienna as part of the celebration marking the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, Syndromes and a Century by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady), is a visionary masterpiece that blurs the boundaries of past and present and, like the plays of Harold Pinter, explores the subjectivity of memory. It is an abstract but a very warm and often very funny film about the director's recollections of his parents, both doctors, before they fell in love. According to Apichatpong, however, it is not about biography but about emotion. "It's a film about heart", he says, "about feelings that have been forever etched in the heart." Structured in two parts similar to Tropical Malady, the opening sequence takes place in a rural hospital surrounded by lush vegetation. A woman doctor, Dr. Toey (Nantarat Sawaddikul) interviews Dr. Nohng (Jaruchai Iamaram), an ex-army medic who wants to work in the hospital, the two characters reflecting the director's parents. The questions, quite playfully, are not only about his knowledge and experience but also about his hobbies, his pets, and whether he prefers circles, squares or triangles. When asked what DDT (Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) stands for, he replies, "Destroy Dirty Things".
Like the fragmented recollection of a dream, the film is composed of snippets of memory that start suddenly then end abruptly without resolution. A dentist wants to become a singer and takes an interest in one of his patients, a Buddhist monk whose dream is to become a disc jockey. A fellow doctor awkwardly proclaims his desperate love for Dr. Toey who relates to him a story about an infatuation that she had with an orchid expert who invited her to his farm. A woman doctor hides a pint of liquor inside a prosthetic limb. A monk tells the doctor of some bad dreams he has been having about chickens. A young patient with carbon monoxide poisoning bats tennis balls down a long hospital corridor.
Syndromes and a Century does not yield to immediate deciphering as it moves swiftly from the real to the surreal and back again. Halfway through the film, the same characters repeat the opening sequence but this time it is in a modern high-tech facility and the mood is changed as well as the camera focus. The second variation is less intimate than the first, but there are no overarching judgments about past or present, rural or urban, ancient or modern. Things are exactly the way that they are and the way they are not, and we are left to embrace it all. Towards the end, a funnel inhales smoke for several minutes as if memories are being sucked into a vortex to be stored forever or forgotten. Like this serenely magical film, it casts a spell that is both hypnotic and enigmatic.
Like the fragmented recollection of a dream, the film is composed of snippets of memory that start suddenly then end abruptly without resolution. A dentist wants to become a singer and takes an interest in one of his patients, a Buddhist monk whose dream is to become a disc jockey. A fellow doctor awkwardly proclaims his desperate love for Dr. Toey who relates to him a story about an infatuation that she had with an orchid expert who invited her to his farm. A woman doctor hides a pint of liquor inside a prosthetic limb. A monk tells the doctor of some bad dreams he has been having about chickens. A young patient with carbon monoxide poisoning bats tennis balls down a long hospital corridor.
Syndromes and a Century does not yield to immediate deciphering as it moves swiftly from the real to the surreal and back again. Halfway through the film, the same characters repeat the opening sequence but this time it is in a modern high-tech facility and the mood is changed as well as the camera focus. The second variation is less intimate than the first, but there are no overarching judgments about past or present, rural or urban, ancient or modern. Things are exactly the way that they are and the way they are not, and we are left to embrace it all. Towards the end, a funnel inhales smoke for several minutes as if memories are being sucked into a vortex to be stored forever or forgotten. Like this serenely magical film, it casts a spell that is both hypnotic and enigmatic.
- howard.schumann
- Oct 8, 2006
- Permalink
Right concentration
Vague talk of art nine times out of ten will miss the whole point. Critics will enumerate a few themes, but that is repeating words, knowing one word instead of ten things. The main thing is that here we have a filmmaker who knows what it all is out there, or better said: knows how to sculpt currents of life with a clarity that is neither misty-eyed nor cynical, that is both unwavering gaze of the present and mental awareness of broader cycles. Let's see what is all that.
The film is split in two halves, both centered around a hospital with recurring characters coming and going. The first half is an idyllic countryside reverie with lush tropical foliage looming outside the hospital windows; it is a love song wafting through the quiet summer night, the sound of crickets carried by the breeze, stories of climbing mango trees and reincarnation, sunlight over green pastures. Inside this part there is another story of denied love but look how gentle the emotional handling; it ends with laughter, with no one needlessly wounded or wallowing in misery, with no judgement and no one's soul exposed except a tiny corner tenderly to us.
So the first part is unspooling some lovely mood, simple so you may not think much of the film at this point.
Except we have a second part, again in a hospital, repeats the opening shot of the film but now the pov has been reversed—with us 'looking back' at what was being looked at in the first scene. There are several shifts in this second part. Some obvious ones, in time and mood, the hospital now is modern, the mood is sterile, the jungle out the window is now the concrete boom of the big city. A little less obviously: we now miss the rustic gift of wrapped crispy pork, the small talk of musical dreams with the dentist, no one tells stories about mango trees or reincarnation anymore. There is no love song. Traffic instead of crickets.
To emphasize this bizarre new landscape of life, there is a sequence starting with when we see a legless man crouching on the floor, a bizarre sight intentionally shot this way to jar. People are being fitted with artificial limbs in the basement, and the imagery though now it makes sense is still depressing by contrast to earlier. Now there's carbon monoxide poisoning.
However, other things have not changed. The stone statue of the sitting Buddha is in the same place. The old Buddhist monk still has funny dreams with chicken, still swaps medical advice for herbs that supposedly sooth confused mind. You may appreciate that his memory is better now.
The best part is at the level of perception of things. Until the second segment with the drastic shift ahead, we don't know all that tropical bliss and boredom is going to be in the past. Suddenly we have memories of a past life, colored as more pure because we recall it as more pure. It is a bit of a mystery just how this has happened, in physical terms, how the two worlds fit together, which is for the better; this is not to be reasoned with, the insight is of emotional intellect.
By this I mean a specific thing, a shift in watching. Now the first part seems more pure, the modern second part more depressing which makes the contrast a little mawkish and the film slightly contrived. But that is in large part in the eye.
If you look closer, in the present segment people are no more sullen or hurried, as we'd think normal to show in modern life, than at first. The surrounding world has changed of course, and that does affect the experience of living. Whereas there used to be clean riverwater to bathe one's broken parts in, now the old woman has to conjure the cleansing illusion of healing water. Isn't cinema nothing but a cleansing illusion? It can only have as much effect, as much depth as you let it.
This scene is key. Faced with the old crone, the boy does what? Walks away suspicious of the healing effect. Next to traffic and carbon monoxide poisoning, now there is cynicism. So if you, similarly, turn your back on the healing promise of the film and walk away with just an artful assertion of the effects of modernization, you miss the whole reason behind this.
It all ends with two unforgettable shots of this cinematic healing illusion in actual effect; everything sucked into the roaring void but that is not the end, the parting shot of public gymnastics in a park shows a renewal and zest for it all to start again, an absolutely marvelous moment.
So we've had some expansion of our awareness in the first part because of the freeflow and not knowing where it goes, colored by memory in the second part and contraction as the mind points out logical contrasts between past and present, setting limits to vision because suddenly we define the present by what it's not, the 'purer' past.
Now emptying ourselves of all that in the first of the two shots (samadhi), this last shot rings loud and clear, restoring the world to broader dimensions. It is one of the most transcendent moments in film, equal to the dance scene of another Asian film, Sharasojyu.
In both cases it is not the shot itself, it is the placement, opening our eyes to it after all we've seen. There are no words, no conventional wisdom for the mind to latch onto except breathing in the air of that one exuberant moment of people.
This is what the Buddhist know and cultivate in meditation as prajna or intuitive wisdom, understanding the one root beneath the myriad branches of illusion.
Something to meditate upon.
The film is split in two halves, both centered around a hospital with recurring characters coming and going. The first half is an idyllic countryside reverie with lush tropical foliage looming outside the hospital windows; it is a love song wafting through the quiet summer night, the sound of crickets carried by the breeze, stories of climbing mango trees and reincarnation, sunlight over green pastures. Inside this part there is another story of denied love but look how gentle the emotional handling; it ends with laughter, with no one needlessly wounded or wallowing in misery, with no judgement and no one's soul exposed except a tiny corner tenderly to us.
So the first part is unspooling some lovely mood, simple so you may not think much of the film at this point.
Except we have a second part, again in a hospital, repeats the opening shot of the film but now the pov has been reversed—with us 'looking back' at what was being looked at in the first scene. There are several shifts in this second part. Some obvious ones, in time and mood, the hospital now is modern, the mood is sterile, the jungle out the window is now the concrete boom of the big city. A little less obviously: we now miss the rustic gift of wrapped crispy pork, the small talk of musical dreams with the dentist, no one tells stories about mango trees or reincarnation anymore. There is no love song. Traffic instead of crickets.
To emphasize this bizarre new landscape of life, there is a sequence starting with when we see a legless man crouching on the floor, a bizarre sight intentionally shot this way to jar. People are being fitted with artificial limbs in the basement, and the imagery though now it makes sense is still depressing by contrast to earlier. Now there's carbon monoxide poisoning.
However, other things have not changed. The stone statue of the sitting Buddha is in the same place. The old Buddhist monk still has funny dreams with chicken, still swaps medical advice for herbs that supposedly sooth confused mind. You may appreciate that his memory is better now.
The best part is at the level of perception of things. Until the second segment with the drastic shift ahead, we don't know all that tropical bliss and boredom is going to be in the past. Suddenly we have memories of a past life, colored as more pure because we recall it as more pure. It is a bit of a mystery just how this has happened, in physical terms, how the two worlds fit together, which is for the better; this is not to be reasoned with, the insight is of emotional intellect.
By this I mean a specific thing, a shift in watching. Now the first part seems more pure, the modern second part more depressing which makes the contrast a little mawkish and the film slightly contrived. But that is in large part in the eye.
If you look closer, in the present segment people are no more sullen or hurried, as we'd think normal to show in modern life, than at first. The surrounding world has changed of course, and that does affect the experience of living. Whereas there used to be clean riverwater to bathe one's broken parts in, now the old woman has to conjure the cleansing illusion of healing water. Isn't cinema nothing but a cleansing illusion? It can only have as much effect, as much depth as you let it.
This scene is key. Faced with the old crone, the boy does what? Walks away suspicious of the healing effect. Next to traffic and carbon monoxide poisoning, now there is cynicism. So if you, similarly, turn your back on the healing promise of the film and walk away with just an artful assertion of the effects of modernization, you miss the whole reason behind this.
It all ends with two unforgettable shots of this cinematic healing illusion in actual effect; everything sucked into the roaring void but that is not the end, the parting shot of public gymnastics in a park shows a renewal and zest for it all to start again, an absolutely marvelous moment.
So we've had some expansion of our awareness in the first part because of the freeflow and not knowing where it goes, colored by memory in the second part and contraction as the mind points out logical contrasts between past and present, setting limits to vision because suddenly we define the present by what it's not, the 'purer' past.
Now emptying ourselves of all that in the first of the two shots (samadhi), this last shot rings loud and clear, restoring the world to broader dimensions. It is one of the most transcendent moments in film, equal to the dance scene of another Asian film, Sharasojyu.
In both cases it is not the shot itself, it is the placement, opening our eyes to it after all we've seen. There are no words, no conventional wisdom for the mind to latch onto except breathing in the air of that one exuberant moment of people.
This is what the Buddhist know and cultivate in meditation as prajna or intuitive wisdom, understanding the one root beneath the myriad branches of illusion.
Something to meditate upon.
- chaos-rampant
- May 20, 2013
- Permalink
Sweeping, emotional and visually driven film documenting times gone by under a banner of the high-art.
Thai film Syndromes and a Century manages to come across as an unashamedly routine love story told amongst a palette of long takes, highly ambiguous symbolism, a distinct manipulation of time and space as well as a telling of events from particular perspectives. The film is a high-art piece, with particular avant-garde sensibilities, as it weaves a tale that sways in and out of the past tense, the present tense and distinct and important memories as well as some sort of alternate reality. The film is very spiritual, and it carries that slow and methodical tone that compliments the delicate and somewhat sensitive subject matter of love, rejected love and life. The slow tracking camera as shots of about twenty seconds in length of stone Bhudda statues suggests whatever journeys these characters are on are more spiritual than they are physical.
Syndromes and a Century isn't necessarily too concerned with narrative, and whatever development of its characters it does, or connection with them we feel with them, is going to be by way of relating to the fondness they feel for one another more-so the vast and complex changes they undergo. Instead, the film takes a step back; focusing more on camera and atmosphere, in particular, where the camera is situated just as much as it is concerned with where it isn't. There is a scene, very early on, in which the camera stands mere feet off the ground at a door-way and focuses on an individual of medical profession talking to various patients sitting to the side of this person's desk. The placement is pretty clear, and with synopsis in mind that this is a personal piece documenting memories of the director's parents as he spent time in the hospital in which they worked, the shot is quite clearly supposed to resemble a child's point of view; tepid as to whether to come in or not and insignificant enough for the people in the room to pretty much ignore them.
But that's not to say the film is entirely told from a child's perspective, just those scenes that director Apichatpong Weerasethakul feels necessary to document in that grounded, lack of cuts and edits manner. Weerasethakul blends a very articulate sense of the observant during most of the internal scenes supposedly revolving around his parents working in respective spaces; shot through a camera that is very much a part of the scenes, but isn't directly involved in the action, with rather routine exchanges and dialogue sequences in which exactly how people feel for one another needs to be laid out and fast-tracked.
This romance revolves around a young doctor who happens to be quite fond of what is the closest resemblance in the film of a lead role in a young, female nurse. When this individual eventually confesses his feelings outside in the hospital grounds, there is an entire segment of the film dedicated to a flashback of what I presume to be a prior love in the life of the nurse, a flower salesman by the name of Noom (Pukanok). Given the overall context of the piece and it being a recollection or acknowledgement of past events, the extended break away into the past tense of when the nurse is reminded of prior events fits the overall context of the film; that being as something that is all about delving into the past and remembering important times gone by; times that, indeed, may well have shaped an individual or had such an impact on them that it has made them the way they are.
As the film progresses, scenes seem to repeat themselves, but from different angles in the room or at the location. Scenes play out from earlier on but cross the line and have the child-like perspective from a different position in what I can only assume is the director's recollection of the general area he frequented many times but, given how complicated and meaningless everything everybody ever said in these rooms was to a child anyway, a lot of the talk; dialogue and exchanges people engaged in with one another just seemed to blend in with everything else and sound the same. What's important in this regard is remembering how highly the visuals of the piece are emphasised by the director; this is a piece about observing and recalling places and people and how this had an impact on you in your life. What it isn't interested in is any particular aural detail: the dialogue between two people that love one another is deliberately unspectacular and the speech in the hospital comes close to exact repetition.
As a piece that evokes a certain emotional response, Syndromes and a Century succeeds. It is a memorable experience about specific memories themselves, while being deliberately ambiguous and hazy in its set time-frame. Even some of the film's more outrageous content feels as if it can carry certain meanings without coming across as too pretentious. Take, for example, the air condition equipment sequence which acts as a visualisation of raw human emotion as the previously seen dust or smoke that had settled in the room is soaked up by a funnel, in a sort of visualisation of the bombshell of a few scenes ago in which a character proposes they move away with their love. The bombshell is dropped; the smoke litters the area but it is then all absorbed as the other individual comes to terms with what positive things that decision may incorporate. The film is stunning at the best of times, which is rather frequently, and doesn't really drop below a level of high, humbling quality.
Syndromes and a Century isn't necessarily too concerned with narrative, and whatever development of its characters it does, or connection with them we feel with them, is going to be by way of relating to the fondness they feel for one another more-so the vast and complex changes they undergo. Instead, the film takes a step back; focusing more on camera and atmosphere, in particular, where the camera is situated just as much as it is concerned with where it isn't. There is a scene, very early on, in which the camera stands mere feet off the ground at a door-way and focuses on an individual of medical profession talking to various patients sitting to the side of this person's desk. The placement is pretty clear, and with synopsis in mind that this is a personal piece documenting memories of the director's parents as he spent time in the hospital in which they worked, the shot is quite clearly supposed to resemble a child's point of view; tepid as to whether to come in or not and insignificant enough for the people in the room to pretty much ignore them.
But that's not to say the film is entirely told from a child's perspective, just those scenes that director Apichatpong Weerasethakul feels necessary to document in that grounded, lack of cuts and edits manner. Weerasethakul blends a very articulate sense of the observant during most of the internal scenes supposedly revolving around his parents working in respective spaces; shot through a camera that is very much a part of the scenes, but isn't directly involved in the action, with rather routine exchanges and dialogue sequences in which exactly how people feel for one another needs to be laid out and fast-tracked.
This romance revolves around a young doctor who happens to be quite fond of what is the closest resemblance in the film of a lead role in a young, female nurse. When this individual eventually confesses his feelings outside in the hospital grounds, there is an entire segment of the film dedicated to a flashback of what I presume to be a prior love in the life of the nurse, a flower salesman by the name of Noom (Pukanok). Given the overall context of the piece and it being a recollection or acknowledgement of past events, the extended break away into the past tense of when the nurse is reminded of prior events fits the overall context of the film; that being as something that is all about delving into the past and remembering important times gone by; times that, indeed, may well have shaped an individual or had such an impact on them that it has made them the way they are.
As the film progresses, scenes seem to repeat themselves, but from different angles in the room or at the location. Scenes play out from earlier on but cross the line and have the child-like perspective from a different position in what I can only assume is the director's recollection of the general area he frequented many times but, given how complicated and meaningless everything everybody ever said in these rooms was to a child anyway, a lot of the talk; dialogue and exchanges people engaged in with one another just seemed to blend in with everything else and sound the same. What's important in this regard is remembering how highly the visuals of the piece are emphasised by the director; this is a piece about observing and recalling places and people and how this had an impact on you in your life. What it isn't interested in is any particular aural detail: the dialogue between two people that love one another is deliberately unspectacular and the speech in the hospital comes close to exact repetition.
As a piece that evokes a certain emotional response, Syndromes and a Century succeeds. It is a memorable experience about specific memories themselves, while being deliberately ambiguous and hazy in its set time-frame. Even some of the film's more outrageous content feels as if it can carry certain meanings without coming across as too pretentious. Take, for example, the air condition equipment sequence which acts as a visualisation of raw human emotion as the previously seen dust or smoke that had settled in the room is soaked up by a funnel, in a sort of visualisation of the bombshell of a few scenes ago in which a character proposes they move away with their love. The bombshell is dropped; the smoke litters the area but it is then all absorbed as the other individual comes to terms with what positive things that decision may incorporate. The film is stunning at the best of times, which is rather frequently, and doesn't really drop below a level of high, humbling quality.
- johnnyboyz
- Jul 10, 2009
- Permalink
Gentle, Jarring, Visionary
I really tried to give it a chance but...
I have now seen three of Apichatpong's films (Mysterious Objects, Blissfully Yours and now this). It finally occurred to me what is going on and why so many people, already enamored of offbeat, experimental and artsy films, still find his work difficult.
I really got into "Mysterious Objects" at first, the "exquisite corpse" method and the way a simple story got embellished as he went along. But Apichatpong seemed to lose interest in the narrative, so the film became a static slide show of his travels, losing all of its narrative energy.
"Sud Saneha" (Blissfully Yours) never got me engaged. It was an agonizing experience in lost opportunity and self-indulgent amateurism.
So now, I can say that "Syndromes and a Century" is by far the best of the three. I gave it 6 out of 10.
I finally understood that Apichatpong is an artist of still images. He has no idea what to do with emotions or the people who feel them. He just allows them to populate his canvas, and pays no attention to what they do. In fact, if they do nothing and stay still, that's even better.
The camera moves from time to time, but that is clearly just giving better depth to his still images. He has no skills in using images that move, other than to take them in in a decidedly passive way. There are times in this movie when it is effective (the steam entering the pipe, for example), but most of the time, it underscores his discomfort with the moving image.
I really want to like his films, mostly because here in Thailand, popular culture is so crushing and stifling, anything artistic is like drops of water in a desert. But I can only cut so much slack.
I really got into "Mysterious Objects" at first, the "exquisite corpse" method and the way a simple story got embellished as he went along. But Apichatpong seemed to lose interest in the narrative, so the film became a static slide show of his travels, losing all of its narrative energy.
"Sud Saneha" (Blissfully Yours) never got me engaged. It was an agonizing experience in lost opportunity and self-indulgent amateurism.
So now, I can say that "Syndromes and a Century" is by far the best of the three. I gave it 6 out of 10.
I finally understood that Apichatpong is an artist of still images. He has no idea what to do with emotions or the people who feel them. He just allows them to populate his canvas, and pays no attention to what they do. In fact, if they do nothing and stay still, that's even better.
The camera moves from time to time, but that is clearly just giving better depth to his still images. He has no skills in using images that move, other than to take them in in a decidedly passive way. There are times in this movie when it is effective (the steam entering the pipe, for example), but most of the time, it underscores his discomfort with the moving image.
I really want to like his films, mostly because here in Thailand, popular culture is so crushing and stifling, anything artistic is like drops of water in a desert. But I can only cut so much slack.
Bad, inconsequential thoughts gather in our brain.
I never had a dentist sing to me while he worked. It's just as well as I usually fall asleep. It is just one of the strange things that happen in this rural hospital. But the stories and the characters seem tangential. They focus is on the sets. Whether the hospital, the farmer's market, or the orchid farm; the sets seem to be what Apichatpong Weerasethakul is emphasizing.
People may be talking or singing, but the camera is on a window with the sun shining through, and it stays there for a long time.
There is no continuity. Scenes shift aimlessly with no apparent purpose. You almost feel like you are watching a Godfrey Reggio film with some dialog.
The film suddenly shifts to a city hospital, and we see some of the same scenes repeated. Where the first half was very feminine, the second half takes on a masculine tone.
The dentist doesn't sing, he has an assistant, and everything is sterile. The doctors seem more matter-of-fact, almost uncaring.
One thing is consistent, and that is a large white Buddha. It sits on the ground of both stories.
After a long shot of a hallway, the screen goes black leaving you wondering. It is a true art film for those who appreciate what a filmmaker can do and who are not upset by the lack of story.
A Zen kōan.
People may be talking or singing, but the camera is on a window with the sun shining through, and it stays there for a long time.
There is no continuity. Scenes shift aimlessly with no apparent purpose. You almost feel like you are watching a Godfrey Reggio film with some dialog.
The film suddenly shifts to a city hospital, and we see some of the same scenes repeated. Where the first half was very feminine, the second half takes on a masculine tone.
The dentist doesn't sing, he has an assistant, and everything is sterile. The doctors seem more matter-of-fact, almost uncaring.
One thing is consistent, and that is a large white Buddha. It sits on the ground of both stories.
After a long shot of a hallway, the screen goes black leaving you wondering. It is a true art film for those who appreciate what a filmmaker can do and who are not upset by the lack of story.
A Zen kōan.
- lastliberal
- Mar 26, 2009
- Permalink
impressionistic art film
It's important to point out that the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul are clearly an acquired taste. This Thai director makes movies that bear only a passing resemblance to the kind of narrative-laced dramas with which audiences in the West are most comfortable and familiar. His works reflect a Buddhist philosophy of deep inner reflection and unhurried contemplation of the moment - and, thus, they demand patience and an open mind from the viewer. But those willing to sample the strange exotic brew that is "Syndromes and a Century" (the title itself is enigmatic) will find ample rewards in the consumption.
There's little point in trying to explain what "Syndromes and a Century" is "about," since it serves no purpose to think of a Weerasethakul film in such terms. As a largely impressionistic work, the movie is more concerned with mood, feeling and setting than it is with conventional drama. Watching a Weerasethakul film is a bit like trying to solve a puzzle for which very few clues are provided. The "story," such as it is, involves two doctors - a woman working in a rural clinic and a man working in a big-city hospital - and their various encounters with patients, lovers and colleagues. We're told that the story was inspired by the romance of Weerasethakul's parents, though the obscurity of its presentation renders that explanation virtually meaningless. Often, an earlier scene is enacted a second time, though in an entirely different setting and from an opposing angle. This leads to even more confusion on the part of the viewer.
But it is style, rather than plot, that is of primary importance here. "Syndromes and a Century" is comprised almost entirely of beautifully composed and rigorously sustained medium and long shots, with few close-ups, very little camera movement and only minimal editing within scenes. Thus, even though we may not always understand fully what is going on, we are lulled into the movie by the seductive, hypnotic rhythms and style of the film-making.
"Syndromes and a Century" is not as compelling as Weerasethakul's previous film, the lushly transcendent and utterly spellbinding "Tropical Malady," but it should definitely appeal to anyone with a taste for the enigmatic, the exotic and the abstract.
There's little point in trying to explain what "Syndromes and a Century" is "about," since it serves no purpose to think of a Weerasethakul film in such terms. As a largely impressionistic work, the movie is more concerned with mood, feeling and setting than it is with conventional drama. Watching a Weerasethakul film is a bit like trying to solve a puzzle for which very few clues are provided. The "story," such as it is, involves two doctors - a woman working in a rural clinic and a man working in a big-city hospital - and their various encounters with patients, lovers and colleagues. We're told that the story was inspired by the romance of Weerasethakul's parents, though the obscurity of its presentation renders that explanation virtually meaningless. Often, an earlier scene is enacted a second time, though in an entirely different setting and from an opposing angle. This leads to even more confusion on the part of the viewer.
But it is style, rather than plot, that is of primary importance here. "Syndromes and a Century" is comprised almost entirely of beautifully composed and rigorously sustained medium and long shots, with few close-ups, very little camera movement and only minimal editing within scenes. Thus, even though we may not always understand fully what is going on, we are lulled into the movie by the seductive, hypnotic rhythms and style of the film-making.
"Syndromes and a Century" is not as compelling as Weerasethakul's previous film, the lushly transcendent and utterly spellbinding "Tropical Malady," but it should definitely appeal to anyone with a taste for the enigmatic, the exotic and the abstract.
Artistically filmed, but tried my patience
There is a story to be found here somewhere, but it is cleverly hidden among a grab bag of images. Ostensibly it is about the director's parents who were both doctors. But they are on screen for about 10% of the movie.
Director Weerasethakul uses skillful framing and subtle color to create some remarkable images. There are some very sensual scenes of natural settings. The majority of scenes seem to be thrown in due to random firings in the director's brain. There are long slow takes circling statues that come from nowhere and go nowhere and lots of prolonged shots of people staring into space. There is one scene capturing a perfectly ordinary dental procedure that goes on for several minutes and another scene of great length of an exhaust vent sucking smoke out of a room. This latter is somewhat transfixing, but I can't see why it's there.
The movie creates a mood, but I often found that mood to be one of annoyance. If anyone can explain the meaning of the English title ("Syndromes and a Century") please let me know.
This one is definitely for the art house crowd.
Director Weerasethakul uses skillful framing and subtle color to create some remarkable images. There are some very sensual scenes of natural settings. The majority of scenes seem to be thrown in due to random firings in the director's brain. There are long slow takes circling statues that come from nowhere and go nowhere and lots of prolonged shots of people staring into space. There is one scene capturing a perfectly ordinary dental procedure that goes on for several minutes and another scene of great length of an exhaust vent sucking smoke out of a room. This latter is somewhat transfixing, but I can't see why it's there.
The movie creates a mood, but I often found that mood to be one of annoyance. If anyone can explain the meaning of the English title ("Syndromes and a Century") please let me know.
This one is definitely for the art house crowd.
Dig it, man. Be cool.
- theskulI42
- May 28, 2010
- Permalink
Interesting but so what
While the experiments with memory and non-sequential progress through the film are interesting, my final reaction was so what.
What was Weerasethakul trying to achieve that Resnais had already done far better in L'Année dernière à Marienbad. The formalisms explored through the retelling of stories at a different time and place were intriguing but there were none of the power of the imagery of Marienbad. Images from Marianbad live with me 30+ years later. These ones won't and not only because I'll be dead by then.
It was two hours on the edge of tedium, but the skill was you stayed on the edge not fell into ennui. But I had no sense when I left the cinema that I had had a true aesthetic experience or provided me with images to refract new experiences through.
Maybe hotels do more for me than hospitals, I don't know.
What was Weerasethakul trying to achieve that Resnais had already done far better in L'Année dernière à Marienbad. The formalisms explored through the retelling of stories at a different time and place were intriguing but there were none of the power of the imagery of Marienbad. Images from Marianbad live with me 30+ years later. These ones won't and not only because I'll be dead by then.
It was two hours on the edge of tedium, but the skill was you stayed on the edge not fell into ennui. But I had no sense when I left the cinema that I had had a true aesthetic experience or provided me with images to refract new experiences through.
Maybe hotels do more for me than hospitals, I don't know.
- btb_london
- Oct 5, 2007
- Permalink
I saw it coming, but I didn't expect it to be so detrimental...
Syndromes and a Century begins as a fascinating, engaging experience. It maintains that for about half an hour, but then something happens, and it descends into a dull unpleasantry. It never loses its brooding atmosphere, but it just becomes... indulgent, pedantic, bloated, and most of all, boring. The director becomes the audience, he takes long shots of trees and buildings so as to recreate the setting of his childhood, maybe for nostalgic purposes. But I, personally, wasn't raised in a hospital environment, so I, personally, didn't personally make a PERSONAL connection. I understood beforehand that there was a lack of narrative in the story, but I honestly didn't expect it to descend into such uninvolving emptiness.
Sound and Vision
The impossibility of an island
Hmm
This is kind of perplexing, because it feels like the most "normal" or grounded film of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's, but that normalcy is strange and sometimes even unsettling in its own way, a bit like watching David Lynch's The Straight Story after watching all the David Lynch films that aren't The Straight Story.
Like any Weerasethakul film, there were parts of Syndromes and a Century that I found a little dull, but no part of me can call it bad or say it's not worth watching. There really is something about how this director's films look and feel that makes them intoxicating and interesting, even if they are - in a way - sometimes boring.
Watching two close together didn't feel like the right thing to do (had to watch both for work), but Syndromes and a Century was nevertheless a good experience. I didn't like it as much as Memoria or Tropical Malady (which was the other Weerasethakul film I saw recently), but it still had quite a lot to offer.
Like any Weerasethakul film, there were parts of Syndromes and a Century that I found a little dull, but no part of me can call it bad or say it's not worth watching. There really is something about how this director's films look and feel that makes them intoxicating and interesting, even if they are - in a way - sometimes boring.
Watching two close together didn't feel like the right thing to do (had to watch both for work), but Syndromes and a Century was nevertheless a good experience. I didn't like it as much as Memoria or Tropical Malady (which was the other Weerasethakul film I saw recently), but it still had quite a lot to offer.
- Jeremy_Urquhart
- Mar 23, 2024
- Permalink
mesmerizing at times
one of the major assets of contemporary cinema, to me, is to smoothly impose a unique stamp and vision; Apichatpong Weerasethakul has evidently honed that particular aspect. The film has a lot of detail, but it lacks, or rather, is free from a prominent structure or form. It is indeed keen to childhood memories in the way they are disconnected and earnest; the memories flow into each other.
The film is peacefully and radically cut into two halves, juxtaposing natural and urban contemporary life, all the while inverting scenes. when trying to find a meaning in that, i think it is indicating the way we perceive memories. the first half might correspond with juvenile perception of memories; more in tune with nature and live at heart, almost childish (think of the guy confessing his love to the doctor). the second half might correlate to our perceptions as adults; pretty much isolated, dull and uninspired. here, the two halves replay more or less the same story: a hospital, a man, a woman, a quest for love, a monk and a few similar patterns.
in absence of total bliss and transcendence experienced in Weerasethakul's later effort Uncle Boonmee, Syndromes and a Century produces a degree of completion and serenity that is mesmerizing at times.
The film is peacefully and radically cut into two halves, juxtaposing natural and urban contemporary life, all the while inverting scenes. when trying to find a meaning in that, i think it is indicating the way we perceive memories. the first half might correspond with juvenile perception of memories; more in tune with nature and live at heart, almost childish (think of the guy confessing his love to the doctor). the second half might correlate to our perceptions as adults; pretty much isolated, dull and uninspired. here, the two halves replay more or less the same story: a hospital, a man, a woman, a quest for love, a monk and a few similar patterns.
in absence of total bliss and transcendence experienced in Weerasethakul's later effort Uncle Boonmee, Syndromes and a Century produces a degree of completion and serenity that is mesmerizing at times.
- thegodfathersaga
- Aug 26, 2013
- Permalink
Syndromes
It's handy to take this film and bunch it up next to Weerasethakuls previous film Tropical Malady. The construction of both films is similar.
Split in two, working like mirror images of each other, slightly changed by time and by humanity. The first part feels more connected to nature, the second to urbanization. I cannot fully say I understood it but like with other films from this thai director, it's mostly about what you feel during it...about what effect do the images have on you. About how they linger a few seconds more than necessary. Much like Bela Tarr and his lingering images.
Even so, with the little I got from this film I cannot say I can recommend it further. But then again it's not that kind of film. Once you are on board with Apichatpong Weerasethakul his movies will call you.
Split in two, working like mirror images of each other, slightly changed by time and by humanity. The first part feels more connected to nature, the second to urbanization. I cannot fully say I understood it but like with other films from this thai director, it's mostly about what you feel during it...about what effect do the images have on you. About how they linger a few seconds more than necessary. Much like Bela Tarr and his lingering images.
Even so, with the little I got from this film I cannot say I can recommend it further. But then again it's not that kind of film. Once you are on board with Apichatpong Weerasethakul his movies will call you.
- M0n0_bogdan
- Feb 26, 2023
- Permalink
Wrong kidn of art film
I have read several reviews and found this very amusing. Actually I have seen this movie and couldn't figure out what so artistic about it. This is more like Andy Warhol shooting a film about a man sleeping eight hours on screen. Warhol considers this art. Now this film is almost similar. If you want art take a lesson from the real master.
Someone did mention Kubrick somewhere, don't compare him to this guy. It's a different story. Back to art, anyone who is a fan of Kurosawa? How about Fellini? Also there is Gus Vant Sant. Don't tell me this film can be compared to the art of these true artists.
This (Sang Sattawat) is to me a real sleep movie. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Someone did mention Kubrick somewhere, don't compare him to this guy. It's a different story. Back to art, anyone who is a fan of Kurosawa? How about Fellini? Also there is Gus Vant Sant. Don't tell me this film can be compared to the art of these true artists.
This (Sang Sattawat) is to me a real sleep movie. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
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