Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Cemetery of Splendour" is, despite of his well-known idyllic visual style, probably the most radical one that is deeply colored with the rather straight-forward political message that his previous works have hinted only by means of indirect references and poetic metaphors. Although this film has not been circulated in Thailand because of his denial of submitting it to the censorship, the landmines that he laid here and there in the film probably would not let this work circulated under the present circumstances in his motherland, even if he submitted this to the governmental check.
To detect these landmines, however, requires a certain amount of key understanding of the cultural background that ranges from the kind of the required protocol of conduct when to watch the movie in the theater in Thailand, to the general notion of the exemplary center of Southeast Asian polity that is a must for the political anthropology of this area. Having read some of reviews on the film in the international media, I found that these key understanding seems to be missing, which has made this movie look like a sort of the sequel of the preceding, prize-winning Uncle Boonmee, which actually is radically distinct from Cemetery of Splendour in terms of its style and buried messages.
Some part of the narratives in the film even reminded me of such historical cases as Samin movement in Java, a traditionalist peasant movement that denied any authority but one's spouse. This association also made me think of this film in relation to the traditional legal theory of King's Two Bodies by E. Kantorowicz, about which I have written an essay whose original version has been published in Apichatpong Reader in Japanese.
Sick Bodies and the Political Body
To detect these landmines, however, requires a certain amount of key understanding of the cultural background that ranges from the kind of the required protocol of conduct when to watch the movie in the theater in Thailand, to the general notion of the exemplary center of Southeast Asian polity that is a must for the political anthropology of this area. Having read some of reviews on the film in the international media, I found that these key understanding seems to be missing, which has made this movie look like a sort of the sequel of the preceding, prize-winning Uncle Boonmee, which actually is radically distinct from Cemetery of Splendour in terms of its style and buried messages.
Some part of the narratives in the film even reminded me of such historical cases as Samin movement in Java, a traditionalist peasant movement that denied any authority but one's spouse. This association also made me think of this film in relation to the traditional legal theory of King's Two Bodies by E. Kantorowicz, about which I have written an essay whose original version has been published in Apichatpong Reader in Japanese.
Sick Bodies and the Political Body