Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015)
On a rainy night in October, in the small Francesca Beale Theatre at Lincoln Center, Cemetery of Splendour, the latest film from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, guided its audience through an oneiric meditation on time, compassion, and nationalism. Set and shot in the small Thai village where Apichatpong grew up, the film centers around a community struggling with a mysterious sleeping sickness that affects only its soldiers. Housed in a school-turned-hospital and hooked up to machines that radiate soft, colored light, the soldiers become the link between the waking townspeople and the invisible dream world of the past that surrounds them. As protagonist Jen (Jenjira Pongpas Widner) begins caring for solitary soldier Itt (Banlop Lomnoi), she remarks that she is sleeping less, as if the comatose man were resting for her. Simultaneously, her waking life grows stranger: goddesses join her at a picnic table, and young psychic medium Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram) tells her that the comatose soldiers are fighting an ancient war in their sleep. Apichatpong’s camera treats all of these events matter-of-factly, his wide-angle long taking in cool sunlight and synthesizing the mystical and quotidian with the same unquestioning logic that structures our best dreams.
But for the people of Jen’s local and national community, dreaming can be dangerous. Even as the soldiers fight together in a dream of an ancient war, their waking friends and family must fight within the dream of nationalism created by their restrictive government. We see Itt’s journal from his service in the Thai army, his words and scribbles conveying trauma even as they are left largely untranslated by the subtitles; we see the light from the medical machines remains continuous as a shot of mall shoppers on escalators slowly dissolves into one of the soldiers’ infirmary. In another scene, Jen and Itt stand in a silent cinema, waiting for the Thai anthem to play before the movie begins. But the anthem never comes; instead, the film cuts to a sleeping Itt being carried out of the theatre, letting silence be the language of critique rather than words or music. Though Apichatpong expresses his political dissent quietly, the film is still threatened by the Thai censors, a problem so urgent that Cemetery of Splendour, at its director’s behest, will not be released in Thailand and may be the last film that Apichatpong makes in his home country.
Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015)
The compassion and gentleness that the film shares with its audience make its extradiegetic hardships even more stinging. Unable to attend the NYFF premiere, Apichatpong sent along a note to be read before the screening. His words, reassuring and untroubled, forgave the audience in advance should we fall asleep during the screening, and wished us good dreams if we did. Just as generous as his words, his film invites us into its on-screen world of dreamers and caretakers. Jen tends to Itt in his hospital bed, keeping him carefully clean and comfortable as he fights a war she can’t see; Itt, meanwhile, sleeps compassionately, sharing his stories with Jen when he’s conscious and his rest with her when he’s not. For these besieged characters, reciprocity is the order of the universe, a kindness inbuilt into the nature of how things and people exist with one another. As we watch it, Cemetery of Splendour teaches us this kindness as well, allowing us to better understand and empathize with Apichatpong’s sometimes obfuscate, often strange, and always beautiful film world.
Author Biography
Christian Leus is a sophomore English-Film Studies major at Hendrix College and a native of Altheimer, Arkansas. An aspiring film critic, Christian spends her time writing about spectatorial experience and annoying her friends with her opinions.
Mentor Biography
Kristi McKim is an Associate Professor of English and Chair of Film Studies at Hendrix College, where she was awarded the Charles S. and Lucile Esmon Shivley Odyssey Professorship, honored as the 2014-15 United Methodist Exemplary Professor, and nominated for the CASE U.S. Professors of the Year Award. Her publications include the books Love in the Time of Cinema (2011) and Cinema as Weather: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change (2013), in addition to pieces in Camera Obscura, Studies in French Cinema, Senses of Cinema, Film International, The Cine-Files, and Film-Philosophy.
Department Overview
Hendrix College offers a major in English with an emphasis in Film Studies and a minor in Film Studies. This growing program within an intimate and rigorous liberal arts college environment includes a variety of courses in the history and theory of film and media, alongside co-curricular experiences (such as this trip to the New York Film Festival) generously made possible through the Hendrix-Odyssey Program. Extracurricular film-related groups include Hendrix Film Society and Hendrix Filmmakers.
Film Details
Cemetery of Splendour (2015)
Thailand/UK/France/Germany/Malaysia
Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Runtime 122 minutes
Follow this link to read the introduction to this set of reviews: https://www.filmmattersmagazine.com/2016/05/21/2015-new-york-film-festival-introduction/
