Apichatpong Weerasethakulm’s Cemetery of Splendour
Apichatpong Weerasethakulm’s film, Cemetery of Splendour, is, for those who see it, interesting on many different levels. To begin with, viewers cannot be sure what to make of the film. The entire story is about soldiers who have a mysterious illness that makes them fall into comatose states where they appear to be dreaming. They exist in a former school set in a rural area of Thailand. One of the characters, Jen, who lives in the rural area and volunteers to help care for the soldiers, attended the school when she was young, long before it became a hospital. She becomes attached to one of the soldiers named Itt, who has moments where he comes out of his comatose state and talks to Jen about what occurs in his coma. Jen, who lives a presumably mundane life as a housewife is fascinated with It and the memories he reveals to her from the dreams he has in his comatose state. Another woman in the area, Keng, is a psychic who comes to the hospital to help the families of the soldiers to communicate with them. While this is part of the interest the film generates, it is not the most bizarre aspect of the film. What makes Keng’s role in the film unusual is that everybody accepts her and her powers as if they are a normal part of life, and perhaps they are in rural Thailand. Different methods to help the soldiers regain their normal lives are attempted such as colored light therapy—again, for a cynical Western audience—weird. The colored tubes bring to mind all sorts of strange connections that have nothing to do with soldiers or hospitals such as refrigerators, television tubes, tanning salons, and nightclubs. Viewers wonder how these lights can improve the soldiers’ states of consciousness and the lights just increase the weird reality that is the film’s setting. Viewers feel as if they too are dreaming and that weirdness lingers long after the film ends when viewers recall what it is like to be caught up in Weerasethakulm’s vision.
Part of the weird feelings that viewers get when viewing Cemetery of Splendour are related to the dreams that the soldiers have, and that are recounted for viewers in various ways. Glenn Kenny of the New York Times says, “The viewer feels to be floating with the imagery, and when the cutting briefly quickens, a lulling, bobbing motion is simulated. The mood Mr. Weerasethakul conjures is all the more extraordinary when you consider that the movie’s premise, in the hands of almost any other director, would be used to build some kind of horror movie” (Kenny). Yet, it is not a horror movie, although it does include some mystery.
When Jen finds a notebook in which Itt has written some strange entries including some sketches of a building, she wonders if this is not documentation of his dreams during his comatose times. The sketches seem to be of the hospital itself. Jen remembers that when she went to school there, stories of the school having been built on an ancient site that has mythical connections were told. The spirits who still exist in the ancient space, or perhaps the gods that are said to inhabit it, may be responsible for the soldiers’ mysterious illness. At the very least, they may affect the dreams the soldiers have. In the end, Jen, who at the beginning of the film was bored and uninspired, which is why she came to volunteer at the hospital, discovers herself—a self of which she was previously unaware.
Even self-discovery does not seem like a possible outcome of Cemetery of Splendour because throughout the film nothing really happens. Some might even say the film was boring. That does not mean it is not emotional. The whole idea that all these soldiers can no longer communicate with their families is sad. Yet, the film still does not give viewers much to hold on to. They watch the beautiful scenes that do not really flow from one to the next and sometimes include strange occurrences that seem not to make any sense. It is when the film is over that viewers realize the movie is very much like a dream. Western viewers are accustomed to dreams in films, but they are usually given a cue that the character is dreaming. This does not happen in Cemetery of Splendour. What may be the dreams of the characters are experienced as a strange sequence, and then the viewer must decide later that what they experienced must have been a dream sequence. Then they realize that perhaps it is they who were dreaming while awake rather than the soldiers dreaming while they are asleep. After all, it is the viewer who has witnessed the story of the soldiers in a weird, dream-like event rather than the other way around—or at least that is all the viewers can be sure of. Stephen Sharot of the Canadian Journal of Film Studies talks about filmmakers, he calls surrealists, who made movies that included dream sequences that did not cue the viewer about what was about to happen. “Surrealists sought to break down or to overcome, and whereas in popular films it was the task of the ‘real world’ to make sense of the dreams, the Surrealists proposed that dreams provided the model for their ‘super-reality’” (Sharot 70). That lack of definition between what is real, what is dreamed and what is conjured is what makes Cemetery of Splendour so strange. After the film ends, it is hard for a viewer to remember the film’s many twists and turns because those twists and turns are mostly psychological and because the film is a dream created for viewers by Apichatpong Weerasethakulm. He created a dream for viewers to have and the dream is about Thai culture, mysticism, and dreams themselves. In that way the film turns in on itself and leaves the viewer feeling as if she dreamed the film rather than watched it.
Part of the dreamlike quality of the film is the lack of musical soundtrack. Instead, the sounds that viewers hear include the trucks moving dirt around, the nurses walking around the hospital and in the room where the soldiers lie quietly not making any sound. The fans that blow gentle breezes through the room and seem to splash the color from the light tubes in odd patterns around the room. When there is a moment that a spirit or a memory or some sort of abstraction is going to occur, there is a sound of trees rustling about as a cue to viewers that what is coming is not reality as they know it but it is the reality of the film. This adds to the dreamlike atmosphere in the film.
One of the most dreamlike aspects of the film is the setting. Weerasethakulm uses an area of Thailand where he was raised for the setting of Cemetery of Splendour. The setting comes from his memory, but it also speaks to the collective memory of viewers. It is a typical country setting except for the oddities that are thrown in such as the dump trucks that move dirt around with the premise of laying cable in what was once a lovely park and is now several heaps of dirt. In reality, it would be unusual to set up a clinic for soldiers who are in a comatose state in a former school. There are surely places for people in long-term medical states to be cared for, but that oddity is like the oddities many people experience when they dream. It does not seem unusual in the context of a dream. In the context of a movie setting, it provides an avenue for the mystic aspects of the film. Several scenes and background activities in Cemetery of Splendour leave viewers wondering what their purpose is. For instance, why are the bulldozers digging up the park next to the hospital that once was a school? It is not explained satisfactorily and it does not make sense, but like in a dream, things are often just accepted as normal even though, if one were not trying to suspend her disbelief so that she could be immersed in the film and enjoy it, it would not seem so in the context of everyday life.
Weerasethakul seems to confirm that the movie is intended to be dreamlike when Jose Bértolo and Susana Duarte of the journal, Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image interviewed him for their article. When asked about the dreamlike appearance of Cemetery of Splendour, Weerasethakul says,
Yes, it’s a dream. It’s another kind of primitive dream. On the one hand cinema is really linear, but on the other it’s just light and how we play with our memories… Well, on a second thought, any film, either from Hollywood or any other, is more about losing oneself and projecting than about memory. . . . I would like to activate certain memories of the audience, to call their attention to the fact that they are watching a specific illusion on the screen. . . . People are used to the cinema-time, but when they are confronted with another kind of cinema-time experience, suddenly they realize that ‘hey, something is going on there!’ And they realize that they are watching a movie. (Bértolo and Duarte 136)
The fact that viewers are aware they are watching a movie, and in the case of Cemetery of Splendour, also sharing a dream with their fellow viewers, makes the experience unusual to say the least.
But there are many other aspects of the film that make watching it an interesting experience. For instance, because the hospital where the soldiers are being cared for is out in the country, away from the city, there are characters one sees in the Thai countryside such as farmers and other laborers who are digging up a park for some vague reason. Other characters are doctors and nurses who work at the hospital where the soldiers are being kept to recover. Finally, there are conjurers and people who can get in touch with the spirit world. These last characters are not the norm in Hollywood films, so that is interesting, but so is the setting because it too is unusual for Western viewers anyway. This type of setting is usual for the countryside in Thailand because myths about conjuring spirits are the norm in rural areas of the country. The people who live in rural areas are familiar with the cycle of life, which when practiced correctly, is conjuring itself. They live their lives around the seasons—planting, harvesting, winterizing and then starting the process over again in the spring. When the conjurer talks about reincarnation, it could refer to the past lives and future lives of all living things, not just people. That is also a part of living in the country: life is about other life, creating it, nurturing it and then in some cases, taking it so that other life can be sustained.
Part of the reason for the setting is a political message according to some. Perhaps the dreamlike quality of the film makes it safer for Weerasethakul to include criticism of Thai politics even if they are indirect and very vague. Ella Taylor of National Public Radio talks about how the setting refers to the different political regimes of Thailand’s past. Taylor says, “Weerasethakul will never let on if there's a thematic link between the palace and Thailand's successive monarchies or its current political turbulence. Should we hate the soldiers or thank them for their service?” (Taylor). The politics are a part of the collective memory of the rural area, but really for all people of Thailand who have suffered through the continual changes in government.
Communicating messages is an important part of the film. The families of the soldiers hang on the messages Keng conjurers for them allegedly from the soldiers themselves, and Itt communicates with Jen to reveal himself to her and she loves him for it. Viroj Suttisima of Social Science Asia talks about how even the abstract forms of communication in the film, the dreams, reincarnation and imagination seem like typical interpersonal communication “Apichatpong’s films do not limit the boundary of each communication level separately because such condition brings surrounding people to participate as witnesses like the case of interpersonal communication, cultural communication and the other communication about culture as shown in Cemetery of Splendor” (Suttisima 30). The fact that in the context of the film, such communication is considered common and not that unusual achieves for Western viewers the discomfort common with postmodern art, and that is one of the most interesting aspects of the film.
Collective memory is an aspect of the film also. Itt has written down what he remembers of his comatose states. Keng conjures the “spirits” of the undead soldiers for their relatives who trust that she is actually speaking with the soldiers using her mystical powers. Their memories seem accurate, so Keng seems credible. Itt’s memories and the memories that Keng extracts through her conjuring from the minds of the soldier are collective memories about the past, some their own and some of the setting—the ancient ruins on which the school and then hospital is located. These collective memories are shared through Keng’s conjuring but also through people sharing what others have said and through objects placed in conspicuous places throughout the film. For instance, the photo of a soldier in the canteen of the hospital. Viewers have to wonder if this was the leader of the soldiers with the comatose disorder now. He may represent another political statement by Weerasethakulm too.
The connotation in the title is of death, and perhaps that is the point of the film. The comatose states of the soldiers may be a version of death for Weerasethakulm. The conjuring Keng does allows viewers to explore with the characters a meeting between the human world and the spirit world. Keng calls upon the spirits to heal the soldiers from their mysterious illness that may be caused by the very spirits she conjures. However, one cannot help but see the similarities to the Western belief that prayer can help in healing a person stricken with a mysterious illness. When it occurs, it is a miracle. When other cultures call upon spirits, it is seen as strange, perhaps even evil. Kenny says, “There’s a cultural specificity to this movie that will make it, for Western audiences, even more enigmatic than it is in its Thai context” (Kenny). Perhaps that is cultural statement Weerasethakulm includes so that enlightened Western viewers can understand how hypocritical it is of them to dismiss other cultures to the realm of evil when, in reality, the practices are similar to their own.
Cemetery of Splendour requires Western viewers to suspend their Western beliefs. Taylor says, “To enter the multiple worlds of Weerasethakul, you have to slow down and bracket your Hollywood training in plots, endings, psychologically motivated characters and the like. As in all the Thai director's films, the workaday world shares equal space and time with the ghosts, spirits, and memories of a richly decorated past — and, he never says outright, Thailand's troubled political present” (Taylor). Many viewers may not be familiar with Thailand’s troubled political past or present. That cultural aspect makes the film that much more unusual for viewers who do not understand the political references, but there is so much more in the movie that leaves viewers with questions.
The unexplained aspects of the film include a scene such as a shot of people sitting in a park looking at the river. In slow movement, each of the people stands up and moves to another bench all at the same time as if this is normal behavior, and it may be in the context of the film. Another odd scene that Sheila O'Malley of the website, Roger Ebert, points out occurs when Jen goes to a shrine to pray. There are two mannequins at the shrine that represent gods. Later, as Jen sits by herself, two women come by and introduce themselves as the gods the mannequins represented. They tell her that they heard her prayer and then they giggle. What this adds to the storyline is unclear. O’Malley says, “In a world where soldiers sleep in uninterrupted paralysis, perhaps because of the influence of ancient kings, anything is possible” (O'Malley). That is the feeling that viewers are left with: in Cemetery of Splendour anything is possible because they are watching a dream in which they feel as if they are participating.
Works Cited
Bértolo, José and Susana Duarte. "Another kind of primitive dream». Interview with Apichatpong Weerasethaku." Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 8 (2017): 132-137. Google Scholar. 25 November 2019. < https://repositorio.ul.pt/bits... >.
Kenny, Glenn. "Review: In ‘Cemetery of Splendour,’ a Nod to Dream Logic." 3 March 2016. New York Times. Web. 25 November 2019. < https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0... >.
O'Malley, Sheila. "Cemetery of Splendour." 4 March 2016. RogerEbert. Web. 25 November 2019. < https://www.rogerebert.com/rev... >.
Sharot, Stephen. "Dreams as Films and Films as Dreams: Surrealism and Popular American Cinema." Canadian Journal of Film Studies 24.1 (2015): 66-89. JSTOR. 26 November 2019. < https://www.jstor.org/stable/4... >.
Suttisima, Viroj. "Communication and Memory Studies in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Film." Social Science Asia 2.4 (2016): 24-31. Google Scholar. 25 November 2019.
Taylor, Ella. "The Ordinary World Shares Space With Ghosts, Spirits And 'Splendor'." 4 March 2016. NPR. Web. 25 November 2019. < The Ordinary World Shares Space With Ghosts, Spirits And 'Splendor' >.
