Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s audacious jump into the dream world is the calling card of a truly unique filmmaker…
Tropical Malady – and indeed the entire output of Apichatpong Weerasethakul – remains hard to pin down. Since his arrival on the international festival and arthouse circuit with his feature debut in 2000, Mysterious Object at Noon, his films have inspired a fervent devotion from the cinephiles on his wavelength, wrapped in mystery and dreamlike elegance.
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His films are now described as ‘slow cinema’, that small movement of films populated by auteurs whose work is characterised by long takes, little narrative drive and plentiful silence – something like cinema’s equivalent of ambient music. But at the time of Tropical Malady’s release, slow cinema had yet to break out of its festival bubble (has it ever truly managed to do so?), save for a few heavyweight auteurs like Theo Angelopoulos and Bela Tarr. Interestingly, the idea of slow cinema as a movement has never realised coalesced around a single country like previous film ‘waves’, but as a concurrent, broadly international shift in filmmaking perspective, perhaps the sign of a globalised world ill at ease with the frenetic pace of modernity.
The simple truth around ‘slow cinema’, at least for this viewer, is that if you’re not on the filmmaker’s wavelength, you’re going to find it very difficult to adjust. So if you don’t vibe with Weerasethakul’s particular point-of-view, his films can be excruciatingly slow-paced. But if you’re prepared to give over your time and let go of your preconceptions, then his films feel like a magical journey into a different world, a different conceptualisation of how art can function for us.
Weerasethakul’s third feature film is structured into two parts, like many of his early films. The first hour follows soldier Keng (Banlop Lomnoi) and country boy Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee), a gay couple who start a tentative romance together. The second half submerges itself in Thai folklore and metaphor, starting from scratch as if another film, almost entirely without dialogue – this time Keng is sent into the jungle to find a missing person, but finds himself chased by a tiger (played by Kaewbuadee).
The first half, with its depiction of a drama-free gay relationship, is in and of itself a radically different visualisation of queer cinema. All the tired tropes found in films focusing on LGBT+ relationships are absent – suffering, lack of acceptance, bullying – and instead is a relationship of basic simplicity and honesty. Lomnoi and Kawebuadee, both Weerasethakul regulars, are entirely unaffected actors, making no attempt to engage or attract the camera’s attention, existing in their own private space, into which Weerasethakul’s camera gently gazes.
There’s a scene where they start kissing each other’s hands, increasing in passion as the scene develops, but this beautiful gesture of romantic desire develops completely naturally, as if the moment simply occurred to the actors as they were filming. It’s tempting to ask why don’t more directors attempt this level of disarming simplicity, and the answer is simple – because most directors simply lack that level of insight into human personality, hemmed in by the need to have screenplays with three acts, conflicts and resolutions. The confidence to turn away and film something different is rare indeed.
If the first half of Tropical Malady is still reasonably within the realms of a cinema that most people can understand, the second half is much more imperceptible. Better writers than me have delved into the complexity of Weerasethakul’s cinema, particularly his political underpinnings. It requires a complete realignment of the viewer’s mental space, because whilst the first half has something resembling the gentlest of developments, allied with a slice-of-life structure and even some pop song montages, the second half might as well exist in a different universe.
This shift demands a lot from a viewer, as Keng’s trip through the jungle is almost entirely without dialogue (aside from some taunting from a subtitled monkey, as you do). The focus is on long, rippling shots of the jungle and Keng’s journey through it, swept aside in its humidity and heat. Allow yourself to drift into this world and you will be rewarded – resist and the film will reject you. This shift, for what it’s worth, defeated me and slipped past me, leaving me with a sense of incompleteness. But maybe that’s the point…