Jon Enjoys Destroying Dirty Things

I guess Jon's claiming that Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's little oddness Syndromes and a Century is his favorite of all the NaFF stuff we saw together. But I had a harder time getting my footing. I have plans to rent two of Weerasethakul's others (Tropical Malady and Blissfully Yours) as soon as I get home, but in the meantime, I'm still thinking, plodding, really, through this curious piece.

Apparently, all three of these films share a similar format-- that being the fact that the narrative train abruptly stops mid-movie and then starts over, moving in a completely different direction. This reminds me a little of David Lynch's hinge-in-the-plot with the little blue box in Mullholland Drive, but this is really where this movie's similarities to the Lynch sensibility end. The first half of this movie, set in the 70's, is about a young doctor in the Thai countryside who, so as to fend off the attentions of another doctor, relays a story about her own previous infatuation with an orchid seller. The opening scene has this Dr. Toey (the woman) interviewing this other doctor (her soon-to-be suitor), seemingly for a job, except that the questions are playful and about things like his pets and what geometrical shape he prefers. And when she asks him what "DDT" stands for, he stares back at her and then finally says "Destroy Dirty Things." This sort of humor throughout this first section is subtle and mostly played out through long dramatic pauses. Characters disorient themselves and simply do not know how to respond to their environments. As a result, they all seem just a little hapless and cutely endearing.

I really don't know how to explain the way in which the narrative of this film begins to disintegrate except to use the word "hinge" again. Suddenly, mid-movie, we've got this goofy interview happening all over again, with a few differences of camera angles and slightly different questions, but this time, we're in a city hospital and the tone is ever-so-slightly more ominous. Stranger characters appear: there's a surly teenage boy who bats a tennis ball down the hospital corridors (we learn he's in for carbon monoxide poisoning, which immediately made me think that perhaps he'd survived a suicide attempt? Not sure if that was an intentional association on the part of the director or not), a crazy doctor who hides her whiskey in a prosthetic leg, and another weird woman who just stares directly into the camera. Oh, and there's a crazy spooky horn-like machine sucking smoke out of the air in the bowels of the hospital (maybe this references back to the carbon monoxide again? I really am just guessing there). Narrative becomes less and less important and, while the images sound sort of fantastical and wild, the filming technique renders them all atonal and mundane. I kept having to remind myself that I was watching something odd because the director has done a rather impressive job of normalizing all of his weird ideas... and I'm PRETTY sure that his application of this technique is intentional. But this tactic subverts the audience's attention to the details and frustrates us, too. I found myself being both a little annoyed by this and compelled to force myself out of the sleepy reverie this film induced in me.

So, all the publicity materials about this film tell me that it's based on Weerasethakul's (who, incidentally, likes to be called "Joe." I think my spell-check might like "Joe" better than "Weerasethakul" from here on out.) "pre-memories" of his parents before they met. In other words, it's probably based on second-hand stories, much yellowed over the years. And so, yes, in many ways, it's a love story. However, the whole thing is so impressionistic and the directorial touch is so light that I found myself fumbling through it, searching for some familiar convention thereof. I didn't find it... and I'm hoping watching "Joe's" other movies will help me understand his style a little better. Frankly, now that I've had a couple days to think about this movie, I'm a little annoyed with myself that I was so disoriented in and impatient with this film. I mean, I'm able to sit through the likes of Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9 without whining about feeling lost... but there were several moments in which I when I was actively waging war with my heavy eyelids in this one. I think this may be, in part, due to the fact that Joe frequently employs long, wide shots of stuff like a completely empty green field (you hear the actors talking-- gossiping, really-- but there's nothing visually engaging at all) or bunches of people Jazzercizing at the foot of a Buddha statue (this is the final scene, and it immediately follows at least 5 minutes of footage of swirling smoke and that aforementioned horn/pipe contraption). I mean, my attention span is only so long. I hate to be so impatient and so tethered to more conventional film-making practices, but I really felt like I was missing something here.


Jon, please do chime in and tell me what you saw that I missed. You always tell me you like to see a film more than once before you opine... and I'm thinking that's what I'm going to have to do with this one. Can't wait until the DVD comes out. Nor can I wait to see the other two. Is there something slightly masochistic that I eagerly anticipate seeing movies that I know will frustrate me and leave me as baffled as the characters therein? Oh, hey! Do you think there might be some sort of environmentalist message at play here--above and beyond the love poem that floats upon this film's surface? I mean, there's the smoke-sucking thing, the repetition of the DDT reference, the carbon-monoxide poisoning... all juxtaposed against the idyllic country house with all the lush jungle and orchids in the first half... and all the shots in the city park with the Buddha statue in the second half? OK, fine... I'm just grasping. Seriously though, Jon, please help!