A Year in Film: 2010.

01. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul; Thailand/UK/France/Germany/Spain/Netherlands)

02. Greenberg (Noah Baumbach, USA)

03. Somewhere (Sofia Coppola, USA)

04. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, France/Italy/Iran)

05. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, USA)

06. Film socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/France)

07. The Social Network (David Fincher, USA)

08. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Bansky, USA/UK)

09. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, USA)

10. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, France/Germany/UK)

11. True Grit (Joel and Ethan Coen, USA)

12. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, USA)

13. The American (Anton Corbijn, USA)

14. Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell, USA)

15. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Ricki Stern & Anne Sundberg, USA)

16. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Alex Gibney, USA)

17. Buried (Rodrigo Cortés, Spain/USA/France)

18. happythankyoumoreplease (Josh Radnor, USA)

19. The Oath (Laura Poitras, USA)

20. Casino Jack and the United States of Money (Alex Gibney, USA)

Best Director

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives *

Sofia Coppola, Somewhere

Derek Cianfrance, Blue Valentine

Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit

David Fincher, The Social Network

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Ben Stiller, Greenberg

James Franco, 127 Hours

Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine

Stephen Dorff, Somewhere *

George Clooney, The American

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy *

Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Rhys Ifans, Greenberg

Matt Damon, True Grit

Miles Teller, Rabbit Hole

Andrew Garfield, The Social Network *

Vincent Cassel, Black Swan

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Greta Gerwig, Greenberg *

Elle Fanning, Somewhere

Mila Kunis, Black Swan

Dianne Wiest, Rabbit Hole

Michelle Williams, Meek’s Cutoff

Best Writing - Adapted Screenplay

The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin *

The American, Rowan Joffe

The Ghost Writer, Robert Harris and Roman Polanski

Rabbit Hole, David Lindsay-Abaire

True Grit, Joel and Ethan Coen

Best Writing - Original Screenplay

Greenberg, Noah Baumbach *

Certified Copy, Abbas Kiarostami

Meek’s Cutoff, Jonathan Raymond

happythankyoumoreplease, Josh Radnor

Buried, Chris Sparling

Best Cinematography

Greenberg, Harris Savides

Somewhere, Harris Savides *

True Grit, Roger Deakins

The American, Martin Ruhe

Blue Valentine, Andrij Parekh

Best Original Score

Black Swan, Clint Mansell

The Social Network, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross *

Greenberg, James Murphy

The American, Herbert Grönemeyer

The Ghost Writer, Alexandre Desplat

Keep in mind, I have not seen the following (yet): Howl, Waiting for 'Superman', I'm Still Here, Another Year, Carlos, Tiny Furniture, etc.

The Thief's Journal, Jean Genet.

"At least," I said to myself, "if my shame is real, it hides a sharper, more dangerous element, a kind of sting that will always threaten anyone who provokes it. It might not have been laid over me like a trap, might not have been intentional, but since it is what it is, I want it to conceal me so that I can lie in wait beneath it."

NYFF 2010: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Man and animal coalesce in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s ode to a Thai of his past that greatly influences the Thai of his present

Apichatpong Weerasethakul / UK, Thailand, France, Germany, Spain / 2010 / 113m

Are we really humans, or just animals grazing about in a forest? How can we tell the difference? Are we waiting to be hunted, or are we creating a new species by having relations outside of our own? Are we just zombies, sitting in the theatre waiting to be profoundly impacted by a simple piece of art? What defines a piece of art as simple? Are we continually attempting to reach out to our past lives (even if it is subconscious)? Am I really here right now, or am I living this life somewhere else?

Based on a self-published book from 1983 and centered around a character who was fleetingly mentioned in 2004’s Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives defies simple description. It exists in that rare space of cinema as a film you experience rather than view in the traditional sense. Weerasethakul overtly breaks no new ground plot-wise with Uncle Boonmee and it is clear that this is not his intent as an artist. His previous works are marked by a particular avant-garde and experimental aesthetic, and it has never been as beautifully synthesized with his ideas on art and life as it has with this film. Uncle Boonmee is a mood piece, one in which mortality and being are mused over against the backdrop of a dying man’s ghost story.

And a ghost story it is, but definitely not in the common sense. Within the first few scenes, we are introduced to Uncle Boonmee’s deceased wife and estranged son, who comes back as half-monkey half-man with laser red eyes (which prompts an honest and hysterical line about him growing out his hair). At first it is frightening to see this figure (as he pops up right before the film title’s card), but it is not long before the audience trusts him. This is in part because Boonmee, his sister-in-law Jen, and his son Tong approach the ghosts with apprehension for just a few seconds before welcoming them back into the world of the living with open arms. Weerasethakul’s success is that he forges this acceptance as fairly accessible to the audience, which makes nearly anything possibly within the realm of his filmmaking and further blurs the spheres of the living and the departed.

But this is not Weerasethakul’s sole success, of course, because we have not considered his seamless merging of man with nature. His camera frequently remains stationary and lingers on landscapes of forests and animals like water buffalo, which works in conjunction with the immersive sound design to transport the audience into these foreign places. These foreign places end up not seeming foreign at all, actually quite the opposite - they end up seeming familiar, due to Weerasethakul’s skill as a filmmaker to make time irrelevant and ignite a deep sense of site specificity the focus point. There is a universal sense of nostalgia when Weerasethakul shoots a sun descending through the trees because it is not your typical sunset, and we all have experienced it. Although this universal sense of nostalgia is pervasive in some of the sensory-heavy shots, Apichatpong allows for a personal reading as well.

What is specific to this film is part of what makes it so transcendent, like when Uncle Boonmee makes Jen taste honey (which she describes as “heaven” after walking in the sun all day) on his farm or when Weerasethakul breaks off into a thrilling and natural scene where a woman who questions her beauty begins talking to a catfish and is subsequently depicted fornicating with it. The catfish scene is not shot in a provocative or exploitative manner. It never, at any point, feels less than an ordinary way to deal with an identity crisis and not to mention it also furthers Weerasethakul’s contemplation on the convergence of man and animal.

Nearing the end frames, Uncle Boonmee makes it clear that the past affects the present and the future more than we think it does and more than we would like to believe. Weerasethakul adds a very subtle, quiet political edge when a monk takes off his robe in one of the final scenes, which could be interpreted as him dealing with his problems with the Thai government censoring his 2006 film Syndromes and a Century. This scene, among others, firmly grounds the film in Weerasethakul’s reality, a reality which becomes more glowingly optimistic and hopeful as the film progresses (the reality of a Palme d‘Or also helps, and moreover, the recognition the film has received since winning that award is astounding and invigorating).

During the Q&A, Apichatpong spoke about how every reel of film he used (which is about twenty minutes of screen time) was a different ode to his fondness for the Thai films, fables, and folklores of his childhood. His success in this department is singular: it never feels choppy or segmented, one sequence flowing into the next with relative ease and, although it may not be apparent at first, there are interrelated social and philosophical yearnings that permeate the film as a whole. The final scene begs questions about the media and cinema that other filmmakers could only dream of asking in so few words, and that is the power of Mr. Weerasethakul’s cinema - he is able to convey so much with so little.

beautiful bodies.

his beautiful body

dancing

in the last rays of the sun

he is not dancing

but his body is

mosquitus interruptus

biggest fucker i have ever seen

his body lacks the definition

of a statue

of a Greek youth

but is so much more

the outline of his form

is living

and a dog

is running

across the grass

I gravitate towards this rock

because it is closest to the 69th Street entrance.

But that is not the only reason.

If he knew I was admiring him

he might hate me

but that might only be out of fear.

Why did

that man

put

broccoli

and carrots

in my lamb gyro?

it changes every day.

shirt back on

and back to work

but i have seen

the battle and the bruises

and i am blessed

to have had the opportunity

to do so

and now i am only sure

of the light hitting my body

and this notebook

and him

sitting beside me.

i never did see his face...

The Invention of Comics, Amiri Baraka.

I am a soul in the world: in

the world of my soul the whirled

light from the day

the sacked land

of my father.

In the world, the sad

nature of

myself. In myself

nature is sad. Small

prints of the day. Its

small dull fires. Its

sun, like a greyness

smeared on the dark.

The day of my soul, is

the nature of that

place. It is a landscape. Seen

from the top of a hill. A

grey expanse; dull fires

throbbing on its seas.

The man's soul, the complexion

of his life. The menace

of its greyness. The

fire, throbs, the sea

moves. Birds shoot

from the dark. The edge

of the waters lit

darkly for the moon.

And the moon, from the soul. Is

the world, of the man. The man

and his sea, and its moon, and

the soft fire throbbing. Kind

death. O

my dark and sultry

love.

Why I am taking African American Literature.

I was first exposed to a lengthy piece of African American writing in my eleventh grade honors English course. My teacher, Olivia Macaluso, gave all of her honors English classes a long list of authors about halfway through the school year, from which they would choose one and select a novel on which they were expected to write an extended paper weaving literary criticism with their own writing on a topic of their choice by the end of the school year. I was a little late to the game, so by the time I asked Mrs. Macaluso for recommendations on whom she supposed I would enjoy, Ralph Ellison was already taken. She then offered a few others, of which Ishmael Reed was the only one that I had a mild interest in. She warned me about students from previous years having trouble with his work, but I would not back down. I traveled about a half hour away until I finally found a bookstore that had a copy of Mumbo Jumbo available for my taking. Reed's surreal, hyper-attentive style appealed to me, and made me want to do research to understand some of the allusions he was making that I was unfamiliar with.

On October 3rd, the day I was born, of 1998, I received Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as a present from my mother. Mind you, she did not read my mind, or anything of the sort, she just got what I had asked for a while back. I put off reading it, because I had also received two or three novels and had a difficult course load for my honors English class that year, until the summer after I graduated. That summer I took an Introduction to Cinema course at Hunter, and since I live in New Jersey I commuted four days a week, taking the bus and then the train. I remember, quite vividly, being so absorbed within the world that Ellison had constructed that I frequently forgot I was even on a train at all. I did not want it to end, and after I had finished it I thought... I wish I could be someone's boo'ful. But then I discovered, I probably was, and I just didn't know it yet.

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov.

Of students' papers: "I am generally very benevolent [said Shade]. But there are certain trifles I do not forgive." Kinbote: "For instance?" "Not having read the required book. Having read it like an idiot. Looking in it for symbols; example: 'The author uses the striking image green leaves because green is the symbol of happiness and frustration.' I am also in the habit of lowering a student's mark catastrophically if he uses 'simple' and 'sincere.' This is widespread, and when I hear a critic speaking of an author's sincerity I know that either the critic or the author is a fool." Kinbote: "But I am told this manner of thinking is taught in high school?" "That's where this broom should begin to sweep. A child should have thirty specialists to teach him thirty subjects, and not one harassed schoolmarm to show him a picture of a rice field and tell him this is China because she knows nothing about China, or anything else, and cannot tell the difference between longitude and latitude." Kinbote: "Yes. I agree."