Syndromes and a Century (2006)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

one of the major assets of contemporary cinema, to me, is to smoothly impose a unique stamp and vision; Apichatpong Weerasethakul has evidently honed that particular aspect. The film has a lot of detail, but it lacks, or rather, is free from a prominent structure or form. It is indeed keen to childhood memories in the way they are disconnected and earnest; the memories flow into each other.The film is peacefully and radically cut into two halves, juxtaposing natural and urban contemporary life, all the while inverting scenes. when trying to find a meaning in that, i think it is indicating the way we perceive memories. the first half might correspond with juvenile perception of memories; more in tune with nature and live at heart, almost childish (think of the guy confessing his love to the doctor). the second half might correlate to our perceptions as adults; pretty much isolated, dull and uninspired. here, the two halves replay more or less the same story: a hospital, a man, a woman, a quest for love, a monk and a few similar patterns.in absence of total bliss and transcendence experienced in Weerasethakul's later effort Uncle Boonmee, Syndromes and a Century produces a degree of completion and serenity that is mesmerizing at times.

If only this dream sequence of a film came with a frame, a few moments of lucid guidance. A narrator, even for a brief opening and perhaps an explanatory note on the shift from rural Thailand to urban?Without a background prep course, we are left wandering. We are told by reviewers that this is a film about "Joe's" parents, his memories. Oh? Where? Not in the film. Not unless some lengthy Thai passage wasn't translated.Please, Apichatpong, just a hint and the help of structure. It wouldn't have harmed the feel, the mood, the effect, in any way.Are the two contrasting sections of the film, rural to urban, concurrent or a gap in time?Some scenes, disassociated as they may be, are marvelous. The industrial process room, with a snakelike suction tube that would have done Dali proud. The steam, the fumes, whatever the smoky substance, swirling amid the machinery, I could smell the metal in the air.We are also told by other reviewers that it's one of the Four Best films of the past decade in one poll and THE best in a poll of critics associated with the prestigious Toronto Film Festival.Really? You can't be serious.What it truly is? A film of beauty, of quiet, of sly humor, reflection, and a soundtrack of subdued accompaniment that seems to invite introspection in the viewer.That's not all that bad, if you ask me. But we need a Sherpa beyond the simple edits.If you do some research you'll find that the film was prohibited from exhibition in Thailand. Four scenes the censors thought objectionable, including a long, yet somewhat passive kiss and the sight of a monk playing guitar.Strange, these moral critiques coming from country that for decades allowed its capital to become the brothel of the world.I fear some of the reviews are thus political. And certainly I can't support censorship. But let's get a grip on the difference between support for the filmmaker and sainthood.

I have read several reviews and found this very amusing. Actually I have seen this movie and couldn't figure out what so artistic about it. This is more like Andy Warhol shooting a film about a man sleeping eight hours on screen. Warhol considers this art. Now this film is almost similar. If you want art take a lesson from the real master.Someone did mention Kubrick somewhere, don't compare him to this guy. It's a different story. Back to art, anyone who is a fan of Kurosawa? How about Fellini? Also there is Gus Vant Sant. Don't tell me this film can be compared to the art of these true artists.This (Sang Sattawat) is to me a real sleep movie. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Funded by the city of Vienna as part of the celebration marking the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, Syndromes and a Century by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady), is a visionary masterpiece that blurs the boundaries of past and present and, like the plays of Harold Pinter, explores the subjectivity of memory. It is an abstract but a very warm and often very funny film about the director's recollections of his parents, both doctors, before they fell in love. According to Apichatpong, however, it is not about biography but about emotion. "It's a film about heart", he says, "about feelings that have been forever etched in the heart." Structured in two parts similar to Tropical Malady, the opening sequence takes place in a rural hospital surrounded by lush vegetation. A woman doctor, Dr. Toey (Nantarat Sawaddikul) interviews Dr. Nohng (Jaruchai Iamaram), an ex-army medic who wants to work in the hospital, the two characters reflecting the director's parents. The questions, quite playfully, are not only about his knowledge and experience but also about his hobbies, his pets, and whether he prefers circles, squares or triangles. When asked what DDT (Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) stands for, he replies, "Destroy Dirty Things".Like the fragmented recollection of a dream, the film is composed of snippets of memory that start suddenly then end abruptly without resolution. A dentist wants to become a singer and takes an interest in one of his patients, a Buddhist monk whose dream is to become a disc jockey. A fellow doctor awkwardly proclaims his desperate love for Dr. Toey who relates to him a story about an infatuation that she had with an orchid expert who invited her to his farm. A woman doctor hides a pint of liquor inside a prosthetic limb. A monk tells the doctor of some bad dreams he has been having about chickens. A young patient with carbon monoxide poisoning bats tennis balls down a long hospital corridor.Syndromes and a Century does not yield to immediate deciphering as it moves swiftly from the real to the surreal and back again. Halfway through the film, the same characters repeat the opening sequence but this time it is in a modern high-tech facility and the mood is changed as well as the camera focus. The second variation is less intimate than the first, but there are no overarching judgments about past or present, rural or urban, ancient or modern. Things are exactly the way that they are and the way they are not, and we are left to embrace it all. Towards the end, a funnel inhales smoke for several minutes as if memories are being sucked into a vortex to be stored forever or forgotten. Like this serenely magical film, it casts a spell that is both hypnotic and enigmatic.