SFFS Screen: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives March 4, 2011

Part phantasmagorical masterpiece, part rural fable of the afterlife, the latest acclaimed film by celebrated Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a mystical meditation on the impermanence of life and death. . . .
Suffering from acute kidney failure and sensing his life slipping away, Uncle Boonmee retires to the countryside where he intends to spend his final days in the care of close friends and relatives. . . . Traversing a nighttime jungle of distorted memories, he meets the various incarnations of his past lives and reaches the mystical cave where his soul was first born. A tribute to the Thai genre movies Weerasethakul watched as a child, and set in his native region (the country’s lush northeast), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a revelatory film that can be read on many levels: as an essay on various cinematic forms (each of its six reels evokes a different style, varying from costume drama to documentary); as a geopolitical study on a region of Thailand characterized by monks and soldiers; and as a thesis on the power of transformation. Innocent and mature, streamlined yet complex, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives revels in fantasy and invites personal interpretation. Weerasethakul’s imagination pulls the viewer into a wondrous cinematic labyrinth. —Giovanna Fulvi, Toronto Film Festival

Official Website: http://www.sffs.org/content.aspx?catid=8,59&pageid=2088