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Showing posts from May, 2011

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

It seems more a matter of Uncle Boonmee, who welcomes his past loved ones.  But that hardly matters.  Thai writer/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's film has its origin in a 1983 book entitled A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives , apparently inspired by a man named Boonmee who approached the abbot of the Buddhist temple in Weerasethakul's home town and made convincing claims about being able to remember past lives while meditating.  What was to be a fairly straightforward biographical film became a multi-platform art project called The Primitive.    Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is the final installment in the project.  It's more coda than crescendo, and a quiet one at that.  Imagine The Beatles and George Martin having stuck with the original ending to "A Day in the Life," four of them humming in E-major, instead of having the chord struck on four keyboards at once.         "Uncle Boonme's" mysteries begin with its first