A strange disease seems to have spread to the Pompidou Center in Paris, with its visitors injected with images and sounds. Because we no longer dare to speak only of “cinema” to describe the work of the Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul, born in 1970 in Bangkok, author of the 2010 Palme d’Or, Uncle Boonmee. The one who remembers his past lives.
“Experiencing light” better designates the tree-like structure of this work, which simultaneously expands—to installations, even to virtual reality (VR) performance—and tends toward minimalism. The title of the complete retrospective of his production, “Lights and Shadows”, which runs until January 6, 2025 at Beaubourg, as part of the Autumn Festival, speaks for itself.
In addition to the director’s eight feature films, incl Tropical disease (2004), Uncle Boonmee (2010), Cemetery of Splendour (2015) and Memory (2021) – filmed in Colombia, with Tilda Swinton – and several short films, viewers will discover the exhibition entitled “Particulas de nuit”, where a series of intimate videos interact in the Atelier Brâncusi (on the square in front of the Center). Pompidou), which the artist plunged into darkness.
Intoxicating, the walk acts as a memorial walk in the cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, nicknamed “Joe” by those close to him, for short. We find there the elements that populate his films: childhood memories, myths of reincarnation (animal, with tiger, sleep, etc.), stories with villagers who remember the incursions of the army in pursuit of the communists, sounds of the jungle in overprint.
Some images behave like flashes: young soldier sleeping, mouth open, leaning against a tree trunk, woman inheriting under a blanket (Tilda Swinton having sweet dreams), old man on dialysis (a double echo of the filmmaker’s father, the end of his life) . , and to the character of Uncle Boonmee). Close-up of a hand continuously transcribing a dream onto a blank page. Would our eyes fall out of our heads to see better? A few eyeballs float in space like soap bubbles in the video installation Solarium (2023), and we can’t help but think of the ghost monkey fromUncle Boonmeethe reincarnation of a missing son, returning one evening to the family dinner table and asking loved ones to dim the lights: “There’s too much light, I can’t see”he said matter-of-factly.
A sweet dizziness
In terms of VR performance, A conversation with the Sun (a creation based on an earlier installation and a book of the same name), literally lifts us off the ground. Here we are as these transmigrating souls who reincarnate in other bodies, in other places. In the distance, two red eyes (those of the ghost monkey) watch us leave…
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