Watch Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives For Free

Wonderful Movie

One of my all time favorites.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

"You don't have to understand everything," explains Apitchatpong Weerasethakul about his Palm d'Or winning, enigmatic and ambiguous "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" (2010) in a 2010 interview with The Guardian. This remark by the author of the film is very simple but even more relevant as such since it is, I believe, precisely the unconscious demand for clarity and unity, a rational need to understand which leads many spectators astray when it comes to Weerasethakul's cinema. The torment of understanding is what ruins the viewing experience for far too many, making it harder for them to see the simple beauty of films like "Uncle Boonmee".In all its simplicity, "Uncle Boonmee" is a story about a dying man. His family and other close ones take care of him as he requires daily doses of dialysis. On one night, his dead wife appears as a ghost to chat with him and his caretakers at a serene veranda only to be followed by the unexpected arrival of his long lost son who has now turned into an ape with glaring red eyes. A surprisingly calm discussion between those involved takes place, including a few flashback sequences, which slowly lead the way to a new day, a journey to a cave, and finally a detachment from this story to another. There are no spoilers here because they do not exist in the Weerasethakul canon. His films are less about stories and more about images. The gulf between those who love Weerasethakul and those who despise him begins in this division: one tries to find a coherent and consistent story in the images, explaining objects in the screen space as symbols for something much clearer and less vague, while the other tries to embrace the images themselves not as symbols but as what they are, images. One could think of it as cinematic music, a peculiar language of the rhythm which does not call for conceptual understanding but a pre-reflective reception. In addition to Weerasethakul's style, consisting of long takes, slow editing rhythm, large shot scales, lack of non-diegetic music, and a relentless use of ellipsis, which might create discontent in some spectators, there is also a more thematic, or "content-oriented," explanation for this discontent. "Uncle Boonmee" is about crossing boundaries. Halfway into the film, one is ready to accept a dialogue between people and ghosts as natural or a sexual encounter between a princess and a fish as nothing out of the ordinary. Conceptual distinctions into categories such as past and present, man and woman, animal and human, nature and culture, reason and emotion, dream and reality coalesce and disappear. This is why they will not serve a spectator trying to find a conceptually understandable story in the pervasiveness of the images. One could see the circularity of the narrative as a reflection of reincarnation, but even this seems too categorical. To me, there is only a fragmented narrative without clear boundaries unfolding like a beautiful poem without the burden of words. Hopefully this has not come off as an attack. The foregoing discussion has been nothing but a modest attempt to open streams of curiosity. I have tried to explain the division between those who admire and those who despise "Uncle Boonmee". I have located the latter's discontent in Weerasethakul's unique style (using slowness and serenity to create cinematic lyricism which challenges our conceptual understanding) and the film's thematic treatise on crossed boundaries (combining purported conceptual distinctions into one to create a non-linear narrative which challenges our conceptual understanding). Clearly this is not everything, but it is "everything" in less than one thousand words. To Weerasethakul, the discontent of some means nothing but the success of his cinema: "if I make a film that divides the audience, I feel like that's a certain level of success," Weerasethakul tells The Guardian. In the spirit of this remark, there is nothing left to say other than a request to give Weerasethakul's cinema a chance rather than condemning it on the basis of one's own purported categorical distinctions. Like in the films of Ozu or Bresson, the objects in the screen space are not symbolic; the images themselves are what count -- and it is those images where Weerasethakul's cinema returns to.

Throughout this movie it kept crawling in my mind how certain scenes or dialogue or concepts would be great when it is actually done as a proper movie …. then the thud comes when I have to remind myself that, this is IT… this is the movie! Really? Poorly executed … and wait … it won the Palmes D'or? What? Really??! In what parallel joke universe is this?Sure, one can watch this movie and draw parallels and philosophize and read and interpret many things within it, as all who loved it have done … as if there is a strong need to squeeze justification out for this 'nice idea badly done' film. One too can do the same razzmatazz staring at the wall or watching the world from a bus as it meanders through the city or the country side. Go take Pink Panther or any movie you've seen … good or bad …., or the paintings scrawled by the snout of a 'talented' tapir... and yes, bingo… tons of things you could read and imagine within them, whether intended or not! And yes, one could get nothing from it, or one could truly feel excitement and learn things too! And… that's Uncle Boonmee for you too … no more no less.

I really do wish I could like this. As it is, I think it has some dazzling sequences, and some really atmospheric and hypnotizing scenes. For the most part though, it didn't amount to much for me, and that's because I was just really bored by a lot of it. This really just comes down to whether one is hypnotized or bored by it, and unfortunately for me it was the latter. That doesn't mean that it's an awful film, it has way too much originality in what I saw to label it as such (and whether it has anything to really say is anyone's guess). Still, I wouldn't recommend this to most people, simply because it's so hard to get into. Not recommended.

I read some bad reviews on that absolutely didn't hold any sense so I simply had to write one myself to clear up some things: THIS IS A METAFILM. Yes, it's a movie about movies. You can see it in the different style of cinema the scenes were shot, the multiple kinds of lighting, acting, etc. The dead son is an obvious reference to film which is losing its grounds to digital with the monkey suit as a symbol that refers to another movie, you probably know which one if you look closely to Boonmee's wife. They both stand for the change in technology used by film makers to render special effects, which is ALL compensated nowadays with CGI. The aunt is cripple, she comes from modern civilization which can be argued to cripple the human mind as well. Boonmee has a failing kidney and gets a stoma, even when the doctor said he'll be better he won't because technology simply cannot make man immortal. Man must learn to accept its fate but technology showers us with an illusion of immortality, as cleverly showed throughout the film. Nature will always remind us that we are animals and nothing more.The film hypnotizes you in its slow paced story, just like the cow it takes patience to tame the beast and bring it back home. If you're simply complaining about how slow a film goes, go to the bathroom and start checking your emails and phone calls I think you're not the right kind of person to watch these sorta films because you're obviously too busy with the material world and cannot comprehend the patience it takes to deepen your well of consciousness. Namaste and please enjoy this movie.