No film is ever, in any stage, made by one person.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mysterious Object at Noon is most likely the best film I’ve ever seen about the creation of a movie; it shows, without being incredibly blatant about it, simply all of the influences that go into an idea behind every film. I do not think that what we see in this film is meant to be taken literally, that Weerasethakul is actually trying to show the creation of this film about a little crippled boy, but that he’s showing that one will, throughout his life, be influenced by things that he sees and hears, and how all of those stories, all of the problems of others, end up being put into the final project of a film.

Essentially, the film boils shows how often the influences of others influence our own decision making, and how, in a film, even during the shooting, one is constantly at the mercy of others (his actors, his DP, the screenplay itself), and so one can never say that he himself came up with the idea, that he himself should be completely responsible for the outcome of the film. Weerasethakul’s movie is probably the best showing of this I’ve ever seen.

Now, after I have seen four films by Weerasethakul, I can say that this is his easiest film to comprehend, or, in the very least, to begin to imagine an interpretation (because who is to say that I am right?). Syndromes and a Century, Phantoms of Nabua, and A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, while being films that I came to love (and maybe love more than this one), are also films that, when asked to describe them, or to tell what they’re “about,” I can’t even begin to do so. It is not a weakness is any of those films, though (as I do adore them), but I can say that Weerasethakul’s first movie is one that is instantly comprehensible, while still being the type of film to break boundaries that I cannot think any other film has broken, or, at the very least, in that way.

Savvy