It is a film of permeable borders, between Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, between life and death, man and animal. It has the same kind of space-time permeability of The Intruder, where bodies are way stations, not endpoints.
Apichatpong long ago announced himself as one of the most important filmmakers working today, but no feature so deftly illustrates his formal command as Uncle Boonmee. Blending a historical remove redolent of Hou Hsiao-hsien with a magic-realist disregard for physics, the film floats through time not so much as an observer but an active participant, giddily disrupting the continuum with puckish insertions like monkey spirits.
Uncle Boonmee has the power to charm even those who are resistant to its mysteries... There is no single character on-screen who can serve as our infallible guide to this world of sounds and visions; we must get lost in it, as a sensual, cultural, intellectual adventure.
I think that the particular manner in which I first viewed the film [drifting in and out of sleep] speaks to a quality within it that continues to haunt and beguile me some three (fully conscious) viewings later: namely, a deep understanding of the indeterminate connection between the structure of the screen image and the nature of semi-conscious experience.
The distance of his subjects in the frame methodically draws us deeper into his hypnotic world where the sound of our breathing heightens anticipation. It amplifies the pulse and hum of the darkened, textured jungle on screen. But the frame here is also Weerasethakul's most purposeful one, leading us gently into fabled recollection, and cunningly deep inside a haunting cave-womb. History and spirit have a composite curiosity that envelops both Boonmee and the viewer.
Magical, baffling, mirthful, sublime... Every new film from Apichatpong is a reincarnation of his last, of all of his own previous films, video pieces, and installations, and of the entire past of his nation’s filmmaking.
“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” is a one-of-a-kind mixture of the extraordinary and the everyday. It’s a sensory experience that makes its own rules, a dreamy meditation on what is real and what is not.
This boldly original, oddly affecting meditation on the afterlife will reward you with moments of profundity that will linger in your consciousness (or subconsciousness) for a lifetime (or lifetimes).
Just under two hours of quiet enchantment... Weerasethakul's loving embrace of domesticity and lush nature is unhurriedly ecstatic — you really want to be in that rustling tall grass, or in that mildly untidy, lived-in room watching TV.
The movie’s peaceful spirits suggest something of a persuasive aspect, as if Weerasethakul were representing them to materialists, or to Westerners, with a salesman-like benevolence.