• The opening is as strong as anything in 2010 (which puts it up there with the decade) or Weerasethakul. A beautiful short story of a bull (or water buffalo?) tied to a tree post dusk, natural lighting, silhouette work, its tame vs. wild, it tells the story of Weerasethakul’s and it feels surreal—it’s also a break because normally Weerasethakul’s openings are banal and slow (on purpose to juxtapose with his urban vs. wild chapter or divisions)
  • Palme d’Or winner
  • Beguiling and stunning to look at
  • For the first time since his weak debut it does not have the bifurcated structures
  • Tropical surrealism- parallel realities—reincarnation—tame vs. wild, urban vs rural
  • Wesley– “The director still appears to be a man of vinyl. Most of his films reach a halfway point at which you’re required to turn the record over. Side one of “Syndromes and a Century,’’ for instance, was reincarnated as side two. Here side one might be called “Outdoors,’’ side two “Indoors,’’ in which nature’s lush limitlessness eventually gives way to a cold, decidedly limited existence. In the last scene before it’s time to flip the record, Boonmee and the gang make a vaguely scary trek into a cave.”
  • 16 mm
  • Lots of medicine talk- an obsession of Weerasethakul
  • Wild noises- crickets—ambient
  • Static camera. Drenched in greens in medium-long shots
  • Hammock shot is a stunner- a talented visual director who can make set a frame—mise-en-scene master after syndromes and a century
  • The dusk sequences through the trees at night in medium-long of the woman princess in the carriage are spectacular. We have the ethereal greens. The waterfall. Old self in reflection
  • It’s absolutely stunning. Some of the greatest images of the decade
  • Lineage of mise-en-scene from Von Sternberg to Ozu to Dreyer’s Gertrud
  • The photography and lighting are washed out- her skin, the trees, the water all look the same color in the light—the jaw-dropping photography and the reincarnation of character through time made me think of Aronofsky’s The Fountain
  • Medication on reincarnation, human nature (as animal- yes she has sex with a fish), nostalgia, karma
  • No real score
  • The Malick shot of the sun through the trees and then we have it once again at night of the moon, no trees, from the bottom of a cave—a stunner
  • “Ghosts aren’t attached to places—but people” feels large- like the work of a genius writer
  • Herzog- jungle as character
  • Walking towards the camera in silhouette with cave rocks shaping the light
  • Could do without the monkey suit still frame montage dream sequences
  • The film zones out at times— much of the film is breathtaking (the carriage sequences, the opening), some of it mundane, almost all of it is unique, baffling, and certainly auteur signature
  • A very odd sterile “man” funeral which is a statement- as is the ending in which the characters are zoning out watching tv in a bar—it’s a critique- —they’re the bull tied to the tree
  • Weerasethakul is so doggedly his own. Unless you watch a ton of cinema it’s hard to tell the difference between this and just slow cinema
  • Must-See top 5 of the year