Reviews

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  ★★★★ review by matt lynch on Letterboxd

  The present laid on top of the past, the sky sitting on top of the water, the dinosaur in the schoolyard, soldiers convalescing above a warriors' graveyard, the levels of a movie theater multiplex, all times and spaces and people existing concurrently, each visible with just a little shift in the color of the light.

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  ★★★★½ review by Sean Gilman on Letterboxd

  You know that feeling when you just wake up and you aren't quite sure if you're still dreaming or not? That's what watching an Apichatpong Weerasethakul film is like. He's not the best filmmaker of sleep (that's Tsai Ming-liang), or the best filmmaker of dreams (that's David Lynch), he's the best filmmaker of that in-between state.

  "Why do they need so many mirrors?"

  "Hunger for Heaven will lead you to Hell."

  "At the heart of the kingdom, other than the rice fields, there is nothing."

  "Before it disappears it bulges and changes shape, as if it knows, that when it falls, it would be an astounding sight to behold."

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  ★★★★ review by davidehrlich on Letterboxd

  "i've touched way too many penises in my life."

  loveliest moments here are when Weerasethakul flattens reality with the spectral dimension that usually assumes a more present, neon form in his movies... and yet, i'd be lying if i said i didn't miss that pronounced approach to the supernatural. still, what a delight. few films have ever been so palpably suspended by the past and present. hard to ignore how this seems to uncannily anticipate the recent Thai coup, which went down after this wrapped.

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  ★★★★½ review by Eli Hayes on Letterboxd

  Cemetery

  destruction / creation
  
  dreamscapes / reality
  
  industry / nature
  
  interiors / exteriors
  
  knowledge / curiosity
  
  laughter / melancholy
  
  life / death
  
  materialism / spirituality
  
  mortality / immortality
  
  mundane / extraordinary

  of

  naturalism / formalism
  
  observation / participation
  
  past / present
  
  physicality / mentality
  
  poeticism / fear
  
  sickness / health
  
  solitude / togetherness
  
  wisdom / wonder

  Splendour.

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  ★★★★½ review by Josh Larsen on Letterboxd

  There are three states of being in Cemetery of Splendor: waking life, dreaming and remembering. For Jen (Jenjira Pongpas Widner), a volunteer at a remote hospital in contemporary Thailand, these three experiences begin to meld until they form something wholly metaphysical. For those willing to give in to the movie’s esoteric rhythms, Cemetery of Splendor will be a similarly unusual journey. At its most potent, the film evokes its own unique state of being.

  Full review here.

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