mixed media
The second half places some of the same characters,
or their doubles, in the very different setting of a modern
Bangkok hospital, a realm of chilly artificial lighting. Some
earlier scenes recur, with variations: the opening interview and
the consultation of an elderly monk tormented by dreams of
chickens. Where the film’s first section, with its dense greenery
outside every window, is virtually a meditation on society’s
coexistence with foliage, the second half is cold, enclosed:
the single most enigmatic, alluring screen image of the much of the action takes place in the hospital basement, a
year comes towards the end of the Thai film Syndromes and separate zone for treating war veterans and their families.
a Century. The camera slowly circles a basement room in a Partly inspired by the circumstances of his own parents’
Bangkok hospital, gradually homing in on a ventilation pipe. first meeting, Weerasethakul has made a discreet frieze of
The eye is pulled inexorably, mesmerisingly towards, and love stories in Syndromes: love unrequited, remembered,
at last into, the duct, as it sucks up the white fumes that fill narrowly missed, imperilled (the one openly erotic scene is
the room. This strange black hole of meaning is narratively between a couple who, it’s implied, are about to be separated
unrelated to anything else in the film, although it rhymes by professional commitments). Weerasethakul has called his
visually with an earlier image: as a woman tells a folk tale, the film ‘random and mysterious’, but has provided a clue in
solar eclipse featured in her story suddenly appears onscreen. commenting on an underlying theme of reincarnation: ‘We
You’re tempted to speculate that Syndromes and a Century is learn from our successive lives in order to one day find a
structured around these two dark circles, one radiating light at true happiness.’ In this sense, the film’s first chapter – shot
its edges, the other hoovering it in. and edited in a rough cut before he embarked on the second
Syndromes and a Century teases you towards such – progresses towards a sort of correction, if not perfection,
free-associative connections, like all the elusive, hypnotic as it moves through a gradual process of modification in
films of its director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The the second half. Both sections, however, are imbued with an
darling of the international festival circuit since his second aura of elusive yet nearly accessible bliss, to be found in rural
feature, 2002’s Blissfully Yours, the young filmmaker and or urban worlds, in fleeting or enduring contacts between
artist specialises in films that elude rational frameworks of individuals and in storytelling. Ordinary rapture, a presence
narrative and structure, plunging the viewer into immersive of ecstatic strangeness in the everyday, is found too in the
baths of connotation and impression. Weerasethakul’s cult small but striking poetic revelations of film style: in a hospital
breakthrough on the art-house distribution circuit was 2004’s corridor a white-uniformed nurse drops out of a group to
Tropical Malady, a bipartite narrative in which a modern-day bend and tie her shoe, then Weerasethakul cuts to a reverse
gay romance between a soldier and a young countryman shot in which a man in blue makes exactly the same gesture.
changed halfway, without warning, into the mythological tale The film’s final few minutes contain its most perplexing
of a shape-shifting man-tiger spirit. and exalting shift of tone, from the contemplative and quasi-
Magic and metaphor and their roles in everyday Thai life mystical to a buoyant representation of earthly pleasure:
are central themes for Weerasethakul: in his quasi-documentary the black hole of the ventilator is followed by a montage of
first feature, Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), a host of people relaxing in a Bangkok park. The film’s final image is
interviewees, from schoolchildren to fish vendors, improvise of an outdoor exercise class high-stepping en masse to a
variations on another story of supernatural metamorphosis. preposterously bouncy piece of electro-pop. Syndromes and
Commissioned for Peter Sellars’s New Crowned Hope arts a Century has been banned in Thailand, with Weerasethakul
festival, Syndromes and a Century is more grounded in the refusing to cut several images deemed inappropriate for
rational, but is equally characterised by a constant uncanny screening – among them, a monk playing a guitar, doctors
slippage between realms. Like Tropical Malady, Syndromes is drinking whisky from a bottle hidden in a prosthetic leg
CosmiC
a diptych: either two stories, or two variations on the same and a doctor kissing his girlfriend. If the censors believe
, 2007, dir Apichatpong Weerasethakul
one. The first part is set in a rural hospital, where Toey, a female Weerasethakul is bringing Thai society into disrepute, they’re
doctor, is shyly courted by a young man. As she tells him barking up the wrong tree. Syndromes and a Century makes
about her own case of unrequited love, the film flashes back Thailand look pretty much like heaven on earth – if not this
dreamer
to her meeting with a handsome orchid grower, a story with earth, then one of the director’s own imagining.
no apparent outcome. In a parallel episode a Buddhist monk
makes friends with his dentist, an amateur country singer: Syndromes and a Century is released on 21 September
during the dentist’s act, at a fair at night, Weerasethakul drifts
Syndromes and a Century
into a characteristic digression, giving his guitarist a featured
solo slot for no other reason, apparently, than that his music is
a pleasure to spend time with.
105 Artreview
Mixed Media_moving image.indd 3 3/8/07 12:27:29
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150