Syndromes and a Century

There is a story to be found here somewhere, but it is cleverly hidden among a grab bag of images. Ostensibly it is about the director's parents who were both doctors. But they are on screen for about 10% of the movie.

Director Weerasethakul uses skillful framing and subtle color to create some remarkable images. There are some very sensual scenes of natural settings. The majority of scenes seem to be thrown in due to random firings in the director's brain. There are long slow takes circling statues that come from nowhere and go nowhere and lots of prolonged shots of people staring into space. There is one scene capturing a perfectly ordinary dental procedure that goes on for several minutes and another scene of great length of an exhaust vent sucking smoke out of a room. This latter is somewhat transfixing, but I can't see why it's there.

The movie creates a mood, but I often found that mood to be one of annoyance. If anyone can explain the meaning of the English title ("Syndromes and a Century") please let me know.

This one is definitely for the art house crowd.

It's important to point out that the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul are clearly an acquired taste. This Thai director makes movies that bear only a passing resemblance to the kind of narrative-laced dramas with which audiences in the West are most comfortable and familiar. His works reflect a Buddhist philosophy of deep inner reflection and unhurried contemplation of the moment - and, thus, they demand patience and an open mind from the viewer. But those willing to sample the strange exotic brew that is "Syndromes and a Century" (the title itself is enigmatic) will find ample rewards in the consumption.

There's little point in trying to explain what "Syndromes and a Century" is "about," since it serves no purpose to think of a Weerasethakul film in such terms. As a largely impressionistic work, the movie is more concerned with mood, feeling and setting than it is with conventional drama. Watching a Weerasethakul film is a bit like trying to solve a puzzle for which very few clues are provided. The "story," such as it is, involves two doctors - a woman working in a rural clinic and a man working in a big-city hospital - and their various encounters with patients, lovers and colleagues. We're told that the story was inspired by the romance of Weerasethakul's parents, though the obscurity of its presentation renders that explanation virtually meaningless. Often, an earlier scene is enacted a second time, though in an entirely different setting and from an opposing angle. This leads to even more confusion on the part of the viewer.

But it is style, rather than plot, that is of primary importance here. "Syndromes and a Century" is comprised almost entirely of beautifully composed and rigorously sustained medium and long shots, with few close-ups, very little camera movement and only minimal editing within scenes. Thus, even though we may not always understand fully what is going on, we are lulled into the movie by the seductive, hypnotic rhythms and style of the film-making.

"Syndromes and a Century" is not as compelling as Weerasethakul's previous film, the lushly transcendent and utterly spellbinding "Tropical Malady," but it should definitely appeal to anyone with a taste for the enigmatic, the exotic and the abstract.

I never had a dentist sing to me while he worked. It's just as well as I usually fall asleep. It is just one of the strange things that happen in this rural hospital. But the stories and the characters seem tangential. They focus is on the sets. Whether the hospital, the farmer's market, or the orchid farm; the sets seem to be what Apichatpong Weerasethakul is emphasizing.

People may be talking or singing, but the camera is on a window with the sun shining through, and it stays there for a long time.

There is no continuity. Scenes shift aimlessly with no apparent purpose. You almost feel like you are watching a Godfrey Reggio film with some dialog.

The film suddenly shifts to a city hospital, and we see some of the same scenes repeated. Where the first half was very feminine, the second half takes on a masculine tone.

The dentist doesn't sing, he has an assistant, and everything is sterile. The doctors seem more matter-of-fact, almost uncaring.

One thing is consistent, and that is a large white Buddha. It sits on the ground of both stories.

After a long shot of a hallway, the screen goes black leaving you wondering. It is a true art film for those who appreciate what a filmmaker can do and who are not upset by the lack of story.

A Zen kōan.

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.

While the experiments with memory and non-sequential progress through the film are interesting, my final reaction was so what.

What was Weerasethakul trying to achieve that Resnais had already done far better in L'Année dernière à Marienbad. The formalisms explored through the retelling of stories at a different time and place were intriguing but there were none of the power of the imagery of Marienbad. Images from Marianbad live with me 30+ years later. These ones won't and not only because I'll be dead by then.

It was two hours on the edge of tedium, but the skill was you stayed on the edge not fell into ennui. But I had no sense when I left the cinema that I had had a true aesthetic experience or provided me with images to refract new experiences through.

Maybe hotels do more for me than hospitals, I don't know.