Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Playing In Theater
•
1h 53m
Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul | 113 mins | 2010
Winner of the 2010 Palme d’Or at Cannes, Apichatpong’s film follows its fatally ill title character (Thanapat Saisaymar) on a final pilgrimage of sorts, traveling the countryside of Thailand’s rural northeast where he encounters long-lost loved ones including an apparition of his dead wife and his son, who makes his prodigal return in the form of a “Monkey Ghost.” A visionary, dreamlike work of lush magic realism that draws from the deep well of Thai mythology and history, proposing an animistic view of the natural world in which there’s nothing unusual about the appearance of a catfish who speaks, and where the possibility of regeneration awaits at the precipice of death.
“Apichatpong, one of my favorite directors, approaches this material with a lush, slow rhythm that’s deeply rooted in the land. I love that it’s less a traditional narrative and more a meditation, where, as Uncle Boonmee prepares for the afterlife, memories and specters of his wife and other mystical beings begin to quietly emerge. It inspires me deeply.” —Tyler Mitchell
Up Next in Playing In Theater
-
The Hole
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang | 89 mins | 1999
It’s the close of the millennium and Taipei has emptied out with the onset of a mysterious virus, but Lee Kang-sheng and Yang Kuei-mei lag behind among the ruins, where maybe a last chance at communication lies through a breach between their apartments... -
Roma
Directed by Ari Marcopoulos | 14 mins | 2016
Evoking the spirit of postwar neo-realism, Marcopoulos sketches an impression of the Italian capital with unvarnished detail, capturing the quotidian life of a city where past and present collide. A lone roller-skater pirouettes beside an ancient canal... -
Sketches for #PUNK
Directed by Ari Marcopoulos | 15 mins | 2019
The rhythms of tribal dance and street basketball commune in this diasporic summit, in which studio footage of famed Zimbabwe-born, New York–based choreographer Nora Chipaumire is intercut with teenagers hitting jump shots on a Manhattan court. The cit...
