Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Saw Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, a Tibetan film about the dull, prosaic, awesome, solemn death of an old man. His kidneys are failing him and, as he is dying, he is visited by ghosts and monsters and remembers his past lives. They are not altogether evil, these creatures, they are genuinely frightening but they are also mere facts of life, as simultaneously unexciting and grand as a sunset. The film Lynchianly focuses on the dullness of extraordinary events in order to illuminate the excitement of a fairly dull event: the final death of a dying man.

The film is pretty neat. It's very slow, alas, which made it difficult to sit through but there are moments of absolute mysterious magic that keep it lively. The film opens with the man, Uncle Boonmee, recalling his past life as a cow who escapes from his owners. He wanders into the woods, trailing a broken rope, only to be eventually collected again. As he-the-cow is lead away, the camera moves to the silent, black silhouette of a man standing in the forest, his eyes glowing red. We fade to black. What in the hell, right? The livening moments of magic are undercut however by the contemplative but almost tedious surrounding moments. Like it or not, even as the man lies dying there are bills to pay and the farm to mind. Even the "uncle" in the title underscores how remote we are from the action. He's not our brother, father, or son, but some barely-known uncle.

The film is deep and magical, fascinating and hypnotic. It is very unusual in parts, evoking fairy tales or horror films, and so I don't know if it would be better to risk boredom and see it alone or to risk cynicism and see it with a friend. A remote and difficult film, I think it got the better of me a bit, but it was so strange and I did like it.