AmosL
12-10-2007, 10:54 AM
“Syndromes and a Century”
Serene Magic
Amos Lassen
Blurring past and present, “Syndromes and a Century” (Strand Releasing) by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a visually beautiful movie that carefully explores the subjectivity of memory. The director recollects his parents, both of whom were doctors and he looks at their lives before they fell in love. He looks at their emotions and examines their feelings.
The movie is made up of two parts. In the first part, Dr. Toey, a woman, interviews Dr. Nohng, who wants to work in the rural hospital where the scene is set. The questioning is amusing and playful and the entire film is presented as a fragmented dream—things start suddenly and there is no resolution making the movie a bit difficult to understand. It constantly shifts between the surreal and the real. It is impressionistic and disorienting and composed of scenes which center on different hospitals and focuses on couples, job interviews, romance and patients. This may seem annoying but everything is gentle, serene, evocative and subtle. The director welds image and sound together and the movie, while cryptic at times, numbs the senses. It jars gently and narrative is left on the side of imagery and gives us cinematic deconstruction that is sublime to watch. Here is cinema elevated to art and the impact of the film makes one shudder. The movie is dazzling to the eye and awakens the viewer with its lush cinema photography. There is a sense of unease which is gorgeous and the story has no beginning and no end—it is a series of snippets which convey memory and feeling. The camera seems to remember what we have forgotten and the language of film is used completely. It is human as it recognizes that which cannot be explained.
Serene Magic
Amos Lassen
Blurring past and present, “Syndromes and a Century” (Strand Releasing) by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a visually beautiful movie that carefully explores the subjectivity of memory. The director recollects his parents, both of whom were doctors and he looks at their lives before they fell in love. He looks at their emotions and examines their feelings.
The movie is made up of two parts. In the first part, Dr. Toey, a woman, interviews Dr. Nohng, who wants to work in the rural hospital where the scene is set. The questioning is amusing and playful and the entire film is presented as a fragmented dream—things start suddenly and there is no resolution making the movie a bit difficult to understand. It constantly shifts between the surreal and the real. It is impressionistic and disorienting and composed of scenes which center on different hospitals and focuses on couples, job interviews, romance and patients. This may seem annoying but everything is gentle, serene, evocative and subtle. The director welds image and sound together and the movie, while cryptic at times, numbs the senses. It jars gently and narrative is left on the side of imagery and gives us cinematic deconstruction that is sublime to watch. Here is cinema elevated to art and the impact of the film makes one shudder. The movie is dazzling to the eye and awakens the viewer with its lush cinema photography. There is a sense of unease which is gorgeous and the story has no beginning and no end—it is a series of snippets which convey memory and feeling. The camera seems to remember what we have forgotten and the language of film is used completely. It is human as it recognizes that which cannot be explained.