Apichatpong Weerasethakul
What joy! A joy it must be said at Cannes that the charts do not we have been accustomed, as there often detects calculation or determination to devote values already established (often not their best film). Nothing like this time: a clear choice in favor of works of cinema strange, and oh so different from each other. Who will follow reviews of this blog knows how much I loved and hoped to return to Tour winners Mathieu Amalric, a man who cries Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Men and Gods by Xavier Beauvois, Certified copy of Abbas Kiarostami What is and what Juliette Binoche performs. So many films, each in its own way, inventing their own form, try the adventure of narrative and staging, the better to approach the world as it is, as we live and dream.
But who could imagine that this choice would be crowned by the most radical and most legitimate plams gold to Uncle Boonmee Apichatpong Weerasethakul? While we rejoice in this award, given to a wonderful film, a fifth feature of the most important artists of the early century.
The film, Uncle Boonmee who remembers his past life seems a fantastic tale, where a person approaching death is joined by the ghosts of the past, under the guise sometimes daily and sometimes fantastic. It is this, but especially the construction of a space-time unknown, where the places, times, attendance, relations between the acts do not obey the usual laws. This film is an experiment proposed for each viewer, creates reluctance among many, very available to indulge in other attitudes, other modes than those to which they are accustomed. It is their absolute right, of course, is also the mark of a refusal to discover what the film, like all art, is home to more rich: the discovery not of other worlds (it does There is only one, ours), but other reports in the world. Pass the hope that it might even help us change it a bit, our old world that is not going so well - no longer in Thailand, the country of Weerasethakul.
As often happens, the output of the projection of Uncle Boonmee I played with friends, angered by the film. Is that the challenge works really innovative not indifferent, it can easily annoyed that remains outside - and often mocked. It's a long story, which he should answer only by word that comes and tries to convince the incentive to tame these new forms, learn to let go of unknown sensations: the innumerable beauties that offer movie-river, this movie-universe, this film is also happy dream laughing, sometimes comical, are the rewards of learning. Learns one not to look at abstract painting, listening to classical music, meet forms which at first seemed to us opaque, hostile, or ridiculous?
In the debate that was against my opponents, short fuse: is cinema elitist! So there, no. Whatever you want but elitist, no. Weerasethakul's cinema does not claim any special knowledge, even a monthly membership of a social category. It bet on feelings, on what each is capable of feeling, from his own emotions inspired by the sensuous, mysterious, enchanted.
This universe is not born again of all the imagination of the filmmaker. It is inspired by a report that the world is that hundreds of millions of humans, and that means by the word "animism." This report to the world we noted here a few months ago, is virtually ignored by Western art, including cinema, even though it is the principle of a huge amount of symbolic productions. If, as it repeats itself the envy, the film may help to better understand others, and where appropriate to treat them with more consideration, it is precisely to meet the mental universe that we are foreigners, and which remain. To meet them as strangers.
For all these reasons, reasons containing the dizzying beauty and fun of this movie lived hairy ape eyes shining like fireflies fair and where the princesses are teasing by catfish on the occasion of the most joyous parable about the powers of the image The award of the Palme d'Or is admirably judicious. It is also rewarding this artist there. Whoever since 2000 (Flying Object at Noon, beautiful film not quite noticed), and especially since the recognition climbed step by step with Blissfully Yours (2002), Tropical Malady (2004) and Syndromes and a Century (2006), required gradually as a great filmmaker, but also by multiple works in other formats and other media (many are available on its website http://www.kickthemachine.com/works/index.html , and for man engaged with minority his country, his fight against censorship, support for new creators, in short for life-work incredibly rich young man of 40 years.
La Palme, should be welcomed for further this: the film had no distributor in France, she will undoubtedly find him. It will also help considerably as a result of Weerasethakul's work while it will show his film in several places where he was not sure to be welcomed. But the reward, beyond the artist that the major media say almost unknown, but an assembly of American critics has appointed late 2009 as a major figure in the decade, this award is an encouragement to all artists daring, day after day, are close to them opportunities to work and share the fruits of their labor, because of originality and refusal mercantile codes.
And yet, like: it is welcome, this Palme, because Westerners have a hard time pronouncing name, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. As said Brassens, everyone can not be called Durand, or Smith, there is something scary to read (in Le Journal du Dimanche) Apichatpong was nicknamed "chap-chapo", why not Bamboula instead? Being the world in this world is to learn the names of others, and confront if it is a difficulty with respect and humility if we are not quite capable of arrogance rather than jeering Settler never really divested of their sense of superiority ... Jean Michel
Frodo ( Slate )
"I see these ghosts, the past never dies" INTERVIEW By PHILIP Azoury (Liberation) The Thai filmmaker says his childhood, his jungle and visions:
's plane morning was on time, but not the bedroom. Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul arrived from Korea. Flat but with the desire to talk, keep talking, to unfold a conversation with Liberation lasting for years now. In the lobby of his hotel in the Marais in Paris, he asks if he can take off your shoes and stretch his legs, "as at home. " Weerasethakul, born in 1970 Parents of doctors, studied architecture in Thailand, Khon Kaen, then entered the Art Institute of Chicago. It was founded in 1999 as the production company Kick the machine to complete its projects and those of other independent filmmakers in Thailand, where the sector is dominated by production of consumer-based melodramas and romantic comedies. Recognized visual artist, including presentation in October 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris with Primitive, videos preparatory Uncle Boonmee tour in the village of Nabua, "Joe" received at the Cannes Un Certain Regard prize in 2002 for Blissfully Yours, the Jury Prize for Tropical Malady in 2004 and the Palme d'Or this year for Uncle Boonmee.
You no longer live in Bangkok?
No, I live in Chiang Mai province, where the city of the same name, the second largest in Thailand by the size and number of inhabitants. It has been two years now. I can not stand Bangkok. One morning, with my fiance, we took our luggage, drove with no destination, no specific plans. We did not even know if we would find a home, but we had to break. Was as a very desperate situation. We ended up finding a house in the countryside in a village.
Geographically, it is also where you shot Uncle Boonmee?
No, not at all. It could look like but we turned in another region. Chiang Mai in the north, and we shot the film in the Northeast. Chiang Mai is colder. I am still a bit like a stranger in my own country, dialects are not the same, when the peasants speak them, I do not understand. Time passes more slowly. There are a myriad of insects, vegetation absent Bangkok: geckos, snakes, others I do not even know the name. I hardly move because I still do not know where I'm going to set foot.
You did not run too fast in this place you start to experience pain?
Boonmee is about the past and I had to turn in an environment that reminds me of the past. I was raised in north-eastern Thailand, the time when my parents were doctors in a hospital, I had to live there until I was 24 years.
Living in the countryside was a fantasy for you?
Yes, my film has never given much information on urban living in Bangkok ... I grew up in the countryside and I had to go back. My relationship with the campaign is totally tied to childhood.
Is there a close connection between this move and the fact that you just turn a movie completely rooted in the memory?
Maybe (laughs). Boonmee Uncle for me is very different from my previous films. I find it very linear. I always envisioned as a tribute to an old Thai movie full of ghosts of various bills, which is no longer possible today, but there are still twenty-five years. In this sense, it's a very nostalgic film. At the time of Tropical Malady, I was in something more abstract, more spontaneous and perhaps also more arrogant, he was for me to move in a cinema experimental and avant-garde. Boonmee was calmest of that side. He remembers ...
If the film can seem very abstract to a Western audience, it seems that the things you shoot are instead very specific, physical, concrete for you ...
In fact, not that much ... The result seems rather concise, linear, but at the time of the shooting I did not know what I did and I still did not know what I was plunged (laughs). I phoned my producer, Simon Fields, and I told him: "I am completely lost ... I am perhaps being a TV movie remake of the 70s, I have no idea what the result will look like, it may be crap, I warn you. "With my editor, it has done a major restructuring. Basically, the movie was very interacted. We have removed a lot of dialogue scenes in favor of less explanatory but mostly less redundant for an even simpler. The first cut was three hours. It does not work at all.
The grammar of film is quite simple ...
Yes, absolutely: a mix of wide shots and medium shots, breaking into space in the style of classic cinema.
The film produced for those who love a sense of evidence and say that you turn a few shots ...
mistake, j'amasse material therefore, it is a hell to mount ! In First, I work with actors who often are not professionals, and it requires a lot of catches. The man who plays Uncle Boonmee merely advertisements. Spontaneously, he played too high. He had several takes before it starts to level. When you ask them to play dialogues with a woman supposed to be a ghost, which is not in front of him but behind with a mirror system at the Cocteau, and a boy dressed as a monkey, the actors have a little trouble keeping them seriously. It often takes over again. But I used to. I will not mention the incessant attacks of flies that make some plans and invisible inaudible sound, we became experts at hunting gnats racket! On the other hand, I cover a lot: I filmed the scene from different angles. During assembly, I tend to choose the angle that satisfies me the most and to keep myself up.
You mentioned in an interview with a film haunted by six coils and six different styles ...
Yes, the first is the jungle and the car in the style of Tropical Malady or Blissfully Yours. The second stage of the meal, very traditional. The third is the farm, I filmed two people walking together in nature, it is a scene simple but it has taken so requested. The fourth stage is the catfish in the legendary style that has many irrigated traditional cinema, but in rereading a bit sexier. The fifth is the walk towards death. And the last, more urban and contemporary, brings together characters from my other films that play together. These are my ghosts and I present them to the ghosts of those were Boonmee. One way to confuse this character who comes from a children's book with my own work, and leave things open.
The fifth section concludes with a sequence consists of photographs of young soldiers in a place described as "Future City" ...
I shot a video art with teenagers, and this is my recollection of the shooting included the reincarnation of Uncle .
you under fear of death as the "city of the future?
If I'm not afraid of death? Maybe. I do not have a positive outlook on Thailand's future. No. After, I am perhaps in a fantasy of easy death, where we would always in coexistence with those we loved. I see these ghosts, the animal life, and I know that the past never dies.
is a consequence of your relatively recent interest in Buddhism?
Yes, undoubtedly. It has been five years since I read a lot about Buddhism by practicing a little. But I see it almost in a scientific perspective. What this says about the mind is infinite and opens broad philosophical horizons. I do not see so much as a religion. He also opened to something beyond the trial, which is sometimes contrary to the cinema.
Filming a thing need not be the judge, prove your movies ...
Yes, but there are a lot of ego in the film, and I also try to separate myself from it to be more open to the world. And then the movie simulates the time, and it is sometimes superficial. Even for a genius like Ozu, the filmmaker who brought the most attention and the other time, I do not find the same concentration that I can meet in meditation. More importantly for me, who am like a little monkey, ferret right to left, always intrigued by what happens at any place or at such other time as well.
Reincarnation, is the metaphor that each new love is reborn a little?
I see more love as a form of attachment to another. Attachment ... not a very Buddhist concept. I have much to learn.
You shoot the ghosts with calm ...
Asian literature has described the coexistence of ghosts and the living like a natural thing. Thai cinema classic case was not an apparition of a ghost. But that has disappeared with globalization. Today, Thailand is filmed ghosts with the same fear that in a film or Japanese American.
The Palme d'Or?
It surprised me. I have exchanged three words with Tim Burton, surrounded by so many people that communication was impossible. Good, and after ... I'm serious with movies, I respect the movies when I do, but I do not want my movies scare people. Neither mine nor those of others. I hope my film, because he has been rewarded, does not appear to be authoritative, learned. I want to make you feel good. I just turned 40, I'm less rigid about art as I could be there seven or eight years. After all, Movies are just movies, there is not enough to make a big deal.
By INDEPENDENCIA
(click photo)
Site filmmaker
filmography:
http: / / fr.wikipedia.org / wiki / Apichatpong_Weerasethakul
Film
programmed from 15 to 21 September and
from October 13 to 19
Meeting Debate moderated by Nicolas
Feodoroff
September 21 at 20:30
*********************
********** *** *
Site filmmaker
filmography:
http: / / fr.wikipedia.org / wiki / Apichatpong_Weerasethakul
Film
programmed from 15 to 21 September and
from October 13 to 19
Meeting Debate moderated by Nicolas
Feodoroff
September 21 at 20:30
*********************
********** *** *
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