Ashes

Thailand

2012

20 Min

Color

1.77:1

Thai

Subtitled in English

Audio in Thai

Currently 3.2/5 Stars.
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6,086 Views

CAST Chaisiri Jiwarangsan, King Kong, Article 112 (Lese Majeste Law) political activists

MUSIC Chai Bhatana, Nakarin Rodput

Synopsis

Ashes contemplates love, pleasure, and the destruction of memory. The surroundings of everyday life are shared with extreme intimacy. For Apichatpong, Thailand, while full of beauty, is slowly collapsing into darkness.

“King Kong rarely barked. She had been with us since she was three months old. Every night she slept and looked around in her dreams.

We thought that our spirits were enriched by the fertile soil and the greenest leaves and the rarest insects and the abundance of humility. But came a day in March we woke up from our dream. The sky wept ashes. The rotten ground trembled as baby worms rose to taste the gray snow. Across the mountains the light of devotion shone and blinded our souls. The darkness was so bright we wept and shouted in silence. And we woke up again, and again.

We united like multiple King Kongs with no sound. Every heartbeat a baby was born with her mouth shut tight like a touch of two stones. With pleasure we lived in hope, and hoped to never wake up. A land of Nothing. We slept. We smiled. We ran."

—Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Director

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul (Thai: อภิชาติพงศ์ วีระเศรษฐกุล; born July 16, 1970) is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer. His feature films include Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of the prestigious 2010 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or prize; Tropical Malady, which won a jury prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival; Blissfully Yours, which won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard program at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival; and Syndromes and a Century, which premiered at the 63rd Venice Film Festival and was the first Thai film to be entered in competition there.

Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, Weerasethakul has directed several features and dozens of short films. Themes reflected in his films (frequently discussed in interviews) include dreams, nature, sexuality (including his own homosexuality), and Western perceptions of Thailand and Asia, and his films… read more