Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Perfect for those who really, really, enjoyed The Shape of Water.Now that I've gotten that joke out of my system, in all seriousness, it's a beautiful, strange film intentionally shot in six different visual styles. It's both baffling and deeply moving, with moments of magical realism and thoughtfully composed, authentic daily life. There's very little artifice in this film.That being said, it's an arthouse film that isn't for casual viewers, who will likely find it confusing and overly slow-paced.

Uncle Boonmee is a stunning movie and a treat for someone willing to invest in it. With that being said, it doesn't make for a great casual watch or a movie that is all on the surface (Go rent an Expendables movie if you're looking for pure spectacle based action entertainment). The movie is stunning in the way it tells it's stories, deals with spiritualism and nativity, creates unbelievable soundscapes, and amazingly beautiful shots (while being shot on 16mm film no less!).Bottom line.It's a great movie for the film advocate, but I understand the issues a casual viewer would have with it.

Most movies and novels insist that reality makes sense, "it's the way things really are," but if you think about it, fiction is a mock-up. Fictional plots for even the most mundane and "identifiable" stories require that you, the reader or viewer, accept that life has foreshadowings and climaxes and anticlimaxes and resolutions and make-believe people who are "developed" as they are put through whatever fictional machinery someone (maybe God?) has constructed. Perhaps it's easier for Buddhists to accept that reality is largely illusion. We Westerners are "trained" to accept a Western director's point-of-view: Events can be at first mystifying but eventually they're resolved; what happens in plots happens in life (we don't take kindly to ghosts sitting down at the dinner table); a fictional person's life is a succession of experiences which are like our own or, at any rate, our experiences are enough like those of the fictional person that we can accept them as plausible. Well, of course, "Uncle Boonmee" sidesteps these preconceptions, and this can feel as though the movie's attacking us, our sense of reality, and trying our patience. We're not children after all (who actually have more patience than adults, sometimes, to lose themselves in a dream of princesses and magic catfish and empathetic water buffalo and a world where no one ever really goes away. Death is part of the dream. I think that when you're really stumped by a piece of fiction, a movie or a book, it sometimes helps to think about the title. It also helps to trust the writer or director. If elements of the film are beautifully done (like "Uncle Boonmee's" cinematography and acting and art direction), then it's possible that the writer or director cared enough also to want to convey ideas and feelings that are important to him, and wants you to see they're important as well. Does the movie present us with scenes that might reflect Boonmee's past life? Well, you can bristle and refuse to say that the scenes with the soldiers and the straying buffalo and the princess and the fish are somehow Boonmee's past lives. And it's okay to bristle and refuse. After all, the viewer deserves some help, a few hints, a little stronger plot structure. Alas, you don't get much of that with this film (the reason this is only a four-star review). On the other hand, if you accept that somehow everything that happens in this movie is "part" of Boonmee, things may grow clearer. And there really are hints, mostly in things the characters say: Hunmay the ghost tells Boonmee that heaven isn't very interesting--it's empty for one thing--and anyway that it's people that ghosts cling to, not places. The son-who-is-an-ape says that life among the ape people is much more interesting than his life as a human (no offense to his human family). Perhaps that means that the consciousnesses of ape people and water buffalo and the insects that deserve not to be stepped on--maybe all of these have awareness and an inner life as rich as us benighted humans. Maybe the Buddhists have hit on something: You have to keep going through these sometimes inexplicable experiences we call "lives" and "deaths" until you get it right...or maybe until you just get it.

Uncle Boonmee is often beautiful to watch but sad, strange, depressing all come to mind also. I bought this DVD and should have rented it. I love Thailand and Thai culture and believe in reincarnation; but, somehow this movie left me more unsettled than I would like to admit to. I do recommend it but at your own risk.

One of the greatest films ever made. If you like slow, intelligent, and unique cinema then look no further. If you’re an ignorant person who thinks anything from Asian culture is weird than steer clear, you’re too dumb for this movie.

It took me ten years between my first and second viewing of Uncle Boonme to understand how brilliant this film is. Apichatpong's subtle genius is on display in all its glory.

When you're in the mood to give your attention to a slow, quiet movie, give it to this one. You'll be rewarded with, among others things:- An accurate depiction of rural Thailand,- Beautiful cinematography, and- Weird, interesting ideas.It's more than worth it.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives [Blu-ray ]This movie is over rated and was a great disappointment to me. The acting was poor and although the theme of the movie was interesting it didn't convey any meaning for me. The man who portrayed the Ape like creature appeared in a sub standard costume. The subtitles didn't add to the movie and just added another annoyance. I am so sorry to have paid so much for a movie that is not entertaining, informative or makes any sense to the viewer. The time line and story was difficult to follow from beginning to end.

A charming, entertaining fantasy tale set in the mysterious Far East. Having to read the sub-titles in order to understand the dialogue in no way detracts from a good 113 minutes of entertainment. Well worth it!!

Wandering buffalo, talking, lustful catfish, ugly princesses, monkey spirits, Buddhist monks. This surely is one of the most colourful films my eyes have ever clamped upon. This is like drinking waterfall spray through your iris'... The tempo has a dreamy, almost lackadaisical thrum too it. However, this is to cinema what free-style jazz is to the ears. Not to everyone's taste but also, a little hard to grasp for some. The film doesn't try for an instant to fool the viewer, there are no twists nor turns. It merely refuses to play by the rules set out by Hollywood and western film makers. It has no boundaries, no beginning, middle nor end. It simply floats and for that is beautiful. A glowing political and social commentary touching ephemerally on communism, the borders of life and death, mythology, philosophy and the eternal.

*Uncle Boonmee* may be diminished more than most films on DVD - it's a languid and mesmeric piece that really demands the total immersion you get from a cinema. Even so, there are some exquisite scenes here, and enough to suggest that the Palme d'Or was deserved (albeit in a less than classic year).Having seen this soon after Werner Herzog's stunning film about the Chauvet cave paintings, I was reminded of the anthropologist's key distinctions between Paleolithic and modern man - their senses of fluidity between human and animal beings, and of permeability between the living and the spirit world. It's made quite clear by this film that these distinctions only hold in the contemporary West. The director conjures the world of his own Thai childhood (as well as of the monk whose book inspired the film), where the spirits of the dead are all around, and where human and beast co-exist to the point of mergence.For all this strangeness, though, the humanity of the film is what gives it power. It's beautifully acted by a cast of naturals, and the scene between the dying Boonmee and the ghost of his wife is as resonantly tender as anything I have seen in cinema.The interview with Weerasethakul on this DVD is well worth watching after you have seen the feature. It sheds fascinating light on his motivations and decisions without dispelling the film's entrancing oddness.

I love the way this film switches from the very realistic to the utterly fantastic. The themes of life and death are dealt with in a contemplative way that is both sweet and sad. The sound of the forest is evocative. I really enjoyed this film and am glad to see from the reviews that others have too. I wish there was a soundtrack so I could listen to the forest noises.

I sat through this film waiting for something interesting to happen and it never did.There was two scenes which were both weird and interesting but they gave you false hope of more things to come which were not delivered.In my opinion it was dull and boring.