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Cemetery of Splendour

Country: Thailand, Language: Thai, 122 mins

Minor Interest | Drama | 2015

Original Title

Rak ti Khon Kaen

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Producer: Joslyn Barnes; Charles de Meaux

CGiii Comment

Many [i.e critics] have waxed lyrical about this film...getting paid to watch a film is a world away from paying to watch a film. The divisions and differences between critics and the cinema-paying public are - indeed - this crude and fundamental.

Cemetery of Splendor is a film about sleep...that will send you to sleep! Unless your editor wants a 300-word review!

Call it art, it is a beautifully photographed piece of work. But, alas, if you can't buy into all the psychic, spiritual, reincarnation twaddle...there's not much point in wasting 2 hours. It seems that [most] critics bought into it...expounding their home-grown profundities, profusely stating their deeper understanding of such dreary drivel.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul has carved himself an 'enviable' and dubious niche, he is the 'darling' of the critics...but, when there are no-paying bums on the seats, accolades and compliments don't pay the mortgage!

Definitely, a film for the pseudo-nese.

Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

Soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic in a former school. The memory-filled space becomes a revelatory world for housewife and volunteer Jenjira, as she watches over Itt, a handsome soldier with no family visitors. Jen befriends young medium Keng who uses her psychic powers to help loved ones communicate with the comatose men. Doctors explore ways, including colored light therapy, to ease the mens' troubled dreams. Jen discovers Itt's cryptic notebook of strange writings and blueprint sketches. There may be a connection between the soldiers' enigmatic syndrome and the mythic ancient site that lies beneath the clinic. Magic, healing, romance and dreams are all part of Jen's tender path to a deeper awareness of herself and the world around her.