Cemetery Of Splendour, the most recent work from Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul, examines parallel themes between life and death. The story is straightforward enough, Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas) is a devoted volunteer at a hospital set up for Thai soldiers, many of which are suffering from sleeping sickness. They sleep in beds uniform with the translucent lights of the dream machines that hang over them. The room has a sense of purgatory about it, with a lingering feeling of loss hanging in the air.
Jenjira forms a personal bond with one solider in particular named Itt (Banlop Lomnoi). They share with each other bits about their lives, past and present. This is a theme that has a stronghold on the film, with elements of the supernatural playing a heavy role. The hospital is built on the burial grounds of battle-worn kings of the past, whose spirits are lingering into the sleeping soldiers.
At first you’re putting these pieces together in your mind, that is until Weerasethakul confirms them with Jenjira’s odd encounter with the spirits of two Laotian princesses. It’s not meant to be scary, but rather a piece of the unusual world that these characters navigate through. They’re not breaking into the real world, but rather, are integrated into it. Jenjira isn’t frightened when the princesses reveal to her that they’re long dead, in fact, the scene is crafted with a comedic flare that is one of the highlights of the entire film.
While Weerasethakul is straightforward about some of these supernatural elements, there’s plenty of messages and themes left for us to interpret in our own ways. He will often let the long still shots composed by cinematographer Diego García do most of the speaking for us. We see images of kids trading spaces on park benches, and are left to use our own sensibilities to formulate what exactly it’s underlying meaning is. That’s for us to decide.
Like the soldiers, we navigate the sleepy waters of Cemetery Of Splendour in a dreamlike state. We’re left to piece together there meanings as if we just opened our eyes, not quite sure if we’re asleep or awake. The problem is, sometimes scenes wander for too long, never jolting us awake in the way that it should. The story is a bit too carefree and disjointed fully keep me as invested as I hoped, but there’s a lot of wonder and beauty to be found from the mind of Weerasethakul that makes Cemetery Of Splendour well worth watching.
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