Featured Audience Ratings

• Directors C

  
  [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/user/icons/icon14.gif[/img] A lot of people criticise Uncle Boonmee for it's lack of a solid narrative. Having one wasn't the film's primary focus anyway, but what it does have, simply cannot be explained in literal terms.… More
  [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/user/icons/icon14.gif[/img] A lot of people criticise Uncle Boonmee for it's lack of a solid narrative. Having one wasn't the film's primary focus anyway, but what it does have, simply cannot be explained in literal terms. This art house feature was created for spiritual enlightenment so naturally, it's not your average indie flick. Despite it's incredibly slow pacing, it's overwhelming. It doesn't let it's open minded surrealism disrupt the ideas and explanations of reincarnation, ghosts and the distances and borders between lives. Even in it's weirdest moments it's intelligent, enigmatic, and engaging and perfectly blends genres such as drama, comedy and horror. Visually outstanding, thought-provoking and delightfully otherworldly, it's one of the better films of 2010.

• Randy T

  
  I don't mind dead wives showing up for dinner as uninvited guests but when a Sasquatch starts to browse your old photo albums THAT is where things get a little weird.

• Jan Marc M

  
  Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a fragmented, calm recollection of memories that ponders on life and reincarnation. Metaphoric to the evolution of cinema, its transformation and eventual extinction. Extremely stunning photography. Eerily beautiful.

• Greg S

  
  Thai farmer Boonme meets spirits and ghosts and experiences past lives as he calmly prepares for his death. Unfortunately, this film will earn the title "Uncle Bore-me" from many viewers, thanks to the many laconic, uneventful scenes between encounters with money spirits… More
  Thai farmer Boonme meets spirits and ghosts and experiences past lives as he calmly prepares for his death. Unfortunately, this film will earn the title "Uncle Bore-me" from many viewers, thanks to the many laconic, uneventful scenes between encounters with money spirits and bouts of catfish cunnilingus; the patient will be rewarded with marvelous, mystical sights.

• Bob O

  
  *** It's well known that peoples of the far east feel a closer connection to the afterlife than us westerners. As a result much of their cinematic output plays looser with ancestral or supernatural elements, and their ghost stories are easier to label as magic realism. Uncle… More
  *** It's well known that peoples of the far east feel a closer connection to the afterlife than us westerners. As a result much of their cinematic output plays looser with ancestral or supernatural elements, and their ghost stories are easier to label as magic realism. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a thai film written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It won the Palm D'or at last years Cannes Film Festival, and despite its languid pacing and contemplative approach it is, above all else, a pretty juicy ghost story. Uncle Boonmee is a bee keeper on dialysis living on a farm in the middle of the Thai jungle. His sister-in-law Jen and her nephew Tong come to visit their ailing relative, and discover that the jungle has an otherworldly mysticism. Yet when Huay (Boonmee's dead wife) materializes out of thin air during dinner, nobody makes too big of a fuss. And when Boonmee's long lost son Boonsong makes a surprise visit transformed into an ape like figure called a "Monkey Ghost", there is hardly a raised eyebrow. How the film trivializes the extraordinary in such ways is what makes it such fascinating viewing. In me it recalled Mizoguchi's masterpiece Ugetsu -- another piece of far east film poetry about spirits and their rather opaque connection to the living. To easterners like Mizoguchi and Weerasethakul there is no "other side." The living and the dead aren't separate, but float in and out of each other's communal space like mist moving through a darkened jungle canopy. The jungle of "Uncle Boonmee" is a character in itself, one that knows not time of day nor man from beast. The director's camera lingers on haunting imagery turning the creature filled rainforest surrounding Boonmee's enchanted estate into the Western Woods of Sleepy Hollow. Out of the ever-dark landscape appear the red eyes of the ubiquitous Monkey Ghosts who stalk the land and keep watch. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a pensive and visionary work of high art filmmaking. Those turned off by Tarkovsky style editing and camera work -- the kind that savors every image and detail so observantly that every frame becomes a challenging still photograph -- should steer clear. And viewers longing to be intellectually stimulated should bring their A-game because this is a puzzling, existential soul-search about life, death, and those pesky, red-eyed Monkey Ghosts guarding the space between.

• Emily A

  
  Ghaaaaackkk. I really did not like this movie. It was long and it meandered, and I couldn't make sense of the plot. Nothing seemed to have any sense of continuity or causality, and the filmmakers spend tons of the film's running time showing you nothing. Minutes tick by as… More
  Ghaaaaackkk. I really did not like this movie. It was long and it meandered, and I couldn't make sense of the plot. Nothing seemed to have any sense of continuity or causality, and the filmmakers spend tons of the film's running time showing you nothing. Minutes tick by as characters trek through the forest or through caves, or just sit on a bench doing nothing. There were really only two scenes that I enjoyed: the princess in the pond and the prodigal son/weremonkey. But it was never clear how either tale fitted into the core narrative. Ugh. I wish this movie had been about twenty minutes long. that's as much plot as they had.

• Anthony L

  
  Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is very personal film for writer/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It is the mixture of a lot of ideas and broken memories that he has acquired over the years and after the success of his previous films I guess he thought the time was… More
  Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is very personal film for writer/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It is the mixture of a lot of ideas and broken memories that he has acquired over the years and after the success of his previous films I guess he thought the time was right, whether people like it or not. Many people don't seem to like. I'm not one of those people, for me it has shot to the top of my favourite films of all time list. Not many films have astonished me as much as this has. From the outset, Uncle Boonmee challenges your perceptions and haunts your soul. It may seem like it's a very free film, maybe even improvisational at times but it's not, it's very structured. It is constructed of several contrasting reels that each have their own agendas. It goes from documentary style, to sitcom, to classic Hollywood, to fantasy without the audience really knowing what has hit them. It's part day-dream, part folk-tale and part philosophical commentary (is time linear?) but it is never pretentious or boring. I dismiss the idea that people have been hypnotised into thinking there is something profound here and have therefore heaped it with undeserved accolades. Credit given where credit is due. Yes it is self-indulgent to a point but it is also a work of art, an often over used statement but a very true depiction of this film. Original, thought-provoking and a real breath of fresh air, not for everyone but then again who gives a damn about everyone, certainly not me. I do hope the majority of you will enjoy it as much as I did though, it is certainly an experience to behold!

• William D

  
  "I loved it -- very strange and very beautiful." I heard a young man saying this to his companions with ecstasy in his voice as he walked out of a nearly sold-out screening of "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" last night in Manhattan. I had pretty much… More
  "I loved it -- very strange and very beautiful." I heard a young man saying this to his companions with ecstasy in his voice as he walked out of a nearly sold-out screening of "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" last night in Manhattan. I had pretty much the same response. "Uncle Boonmee" has flaws, but it is also uniquely moving and an artistic achievement of the highest order. The film, which won top prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival, was written and directed by Thailand's resident genius Apichatpong Weerasethakul. (It is said that his friends call him Joe. I will refer to him as AW.) Cannes continues to set itself apart as one of the greatest artistic organizations in the world. That a world-renowned festival would champion a film as radical as "Uncle Boonmee" is remarkable. Somehow the philistines have not been able to take over that festival, as they have taken over just about everything else in the world. The barbarians are at the gate, but true cinephiles so far have been able to keep them out of the Cannes castle. This is very encouraging. ************************* Being highly avant-garde, "Uncle Boonmee" will no doubt be looked at differently by everyone who sees it. In fact, every person will surely see it from numerous perspectives. In the first hour, I saw the film as a celebration of traditional peasant culture. Intellectuals typically spurn rural culture quite vehemently. AW pushes against that tendency by going out to the middle of the Thai jungle and hiring a group of peasants essentially to play themselves. He gives them scenarios to enact that mix traditional Buddhist culture with classic peasant folklore, including ghost stories and fables about princesses and talking catfish. But there is also a bizarre storyline having to do with mysterious creatures with red eyes. This seemed way out of step with the rest of the film. The little bit of explanation that is given about these ape-like animals (from a man who becomes one of them) is that they are a new species mysteriously appearing on the earth. I wondered gravely for a while about this outlandish element that AW had introduced. Was he going off the deep end? Would UFOs enter the film next? But in time what I saw in this use of weird creatures was AW expanding his palette dramatically -- breathtakingly. Instead of just contemplating life as it is lived today by humans and other animals, his vision expanded to encompass life forms from the future as well. The dramatic span of life was on AW's mind -- not just the past and the present, but also the distant future. AW was contemplating life itself, including the open-endedness and unknowability of evolution. This breadth of vision captivated me in a way that a work of art never has before. I had never looked at life in quite this way. When I say that "Uncle Boonmee" is a major artistic achievement, I mean that it showed me a new way to think and feel about life. It also did it in ways that are radically original. AW, having a limitless artistic imagination, even added something profound in the last 10 minutes. Just when you feel the film couldn't get any broader, AW expands his vision yet again. Throughout the film, we had been thinking about organisms in different time periods. At the end, AW suddenly presents the main characters as so complex that each cannot be thought of as just one thing. If you look inside just one organism, he seemed to say, there is as much multiplicity as when you look across hundreds of millions of organisms in different evolutionary epochs. If you want to see the vast expanse of evolution, just look inside yourself. I won't reveal how AW does this, but I can say that it made my audience audibly gasp. It also made the last 10 minutes of the film exhilarating. For some reason, it also made me start to cry. But what of the flaws? There are several. "Uncle Boonmee" is so slow paced that it can become boring in spots. AW was also working with such low-quality equipment that the picture can be quite muddy. In general, the film has a sloppy look to it. I sensed that AW couldn't afford to hire a crew to do the kind of immaculate set decoration, lighting and costumes that made his last film, "Syndromes and a Century," (which was on my top 10 list of 2007) so visually arresting. "Uncle Boonmee" is a feast of ideas and feelings, but visually it's pretty disappointing. The cinematography is also surprisingly dull. AW is known as a master of mise-en-scene, but here it seemed that the peasants he was working with were composing the shots. Often it seemed AW did little more than set the camera on a tripod and turn it on. The visual composition of shots was at times so flat as to be sleep-inducing. Combined with the slow pacing, this sometimes felt like Chinese water torture. It almost seemed like AW was deeply inspired when he conceived the film, but not so inspired during the shoot. It's got to be both. The cinematography's got to give you goose bumps, not just the ideas at the root of the story. But uninspired cinematography cannot sink "Uncle Boonmee." It is one of the greatest films of not just the year, but also the decade. It is the first truly great film of the 2010s. Thank you, Cannes, for ensuring that this film got a worldwide audience.

• Carlos M

  
  I arrived puzzled at the end of this film wondering if Uncle Boonmee could, after all, recall his past lives. Though the direction is steady and thorough, the story is loose and sterile, allowing for countless symbolic readings, even if to fill what appears to be a lifeless, empty… More
  I arrived puzzled at the end of this film wondering if Uncle Boonmee could, after all, recall his past lives. Though the direction is steady and thorough, the story is loose and sterile, allowing for countless symbolic readings, even if to fill what appears to be a lifeless, empty fable.

• Emil K

  
  This film definetly has magic in it. It has this weird hypnotic aura on it, that makes it more like an trance-like experience, or meditation session, than a film. While this is nowhere near as good as Weerasethakul's earlier Tropical Malady, it still is one of a kind cinema. His… More
  This film definetly has magic in it. It has this weird hypnotic aura on it, that makes it more like an trance-like experience, or meditation session, than a film. While this is nowhere near as good as Weerasethakul's earlier Tropical Malady, it still is one of a kind cinema. His films are truly unique. Uncle Boonmee mostly suffers from it's ultra-slow pace which is even for it's director own trademark, a bit too slow. Some of the ideas also don't quite come through, but i think that is not the point. The point is just to go with it and enjoy it as a experience, even if it's flawed and uneven.

• Walter M

  
  Visiting her brother-in-law Boonmee(Thanapat Saisaymar) who is dying from kidney failure, Jen(Jenjira Pongpas) finds his farm to be a lovely place to visit but she has no intent to take it over when he dies, not least because she has issues with his assistant Jaai(Samud Kugasang)… More
  Visiting her brother-in-law Boonmee(Thanapat Saisaymar) who is dying from kidney failure, Jen(Jenjira Pongpas) finds his farm to be a lovely place to visit but she has no intent to take it over when he dies, not least because she has issues with his assistant Jaai(Samud Kugasang) because he is from Laos. In any case, she is not the only visitor this weekend as Boonmee's wife Huay(Natthakarn Aphaiwonk) puts in an appearance. She looks great, considering she has been dead for a long time. And then there is his long missing son Boonsong(Geerasak Kulhong) who could definitely use a shave and a haircut. With a definite debt to Tarkovsky in the way it is remote both physically and emotionally, "Uncle Boonmee who Can Recall His Past Lives" is an introspective and evocative movie that is not only concerned with the subject of mortality. It is also interested in the connection between humans and nature, and the consequences when that is broken. For example, Boonmee uses pesticides on his land which could have definitely caused his wife's cancer and maybe even his kidney failure.(It is also implied that his time in the army could have been part of a dirty war.) Just to keep on the safe side, Jen avoids stepping on insects whenever possible. While I am going to file the catfish and the waterfall under now officially having seen everything, I just want somebody to explain the ending, please.

• Panta O

  
  Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thai: ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ) - what a name for a movie! This Thai art work… More
  Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thai: ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ) - what a name for a movie! This Thai art work directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. And there was a lot there to praise. Most of the story is focused on the last days in the life of its title character. Together with his loved ones - including the ghost of his dead wife and his lost son who has returned in a non-human ("monkey ghost") form - Boonmee is contemplating the reasons for his illness exploring the events from the past lives! Out of this world screenplay which somehow had a lot of sexual tension buried underneath, thanks to the real artistry of the director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. [img]http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/post_spotlight_images/2246/w184.jpg[/img] Perfectly chosen cast: Thanapat Saisaymar as Uncle Boonmee, Jenjira Pongpas as Jen and Sakda Kaewbuadee as Thong, just added to this surreal experience with their acting performances. But this movie is just a part of a huge project which many people are not aware of! It is the final instalment in a multi-platform art project called Primitive which deals with the Isan region in Thailand's northeast, and in particular the village of Nabua in Nakhon Phanom, near the border to Laos. Before this movie there is a seven-part video installation and the two short films: A Letter to Uncle Boonmee and Phantoms of Nabua, both of which premiered in 2009. This project actually explores themes of memories, transformation and extinction, and touches on a violent 1965 crackdown on communist sympathisers in Nabua by the Thai army. As a part of the bigger project, the movie itself it's mainly about the transformation and possible extinction of everything old... and even cinema itself (Apichatpong explained this in an interview with Bangkok Post: "When you make a film about recollection and death, you realise that cinema is also facing death. Uncle Boonmee is one of the last pictures shot on film - now everybody shoots digital. It's my own little lamentation"). Because this is a huge project, not many of us will notice that the film consists of six reels - each shot in a different cinematic style: old cinema with stiff acting and classical staging, documentary style, costume drama and director's favourite style where you see "long takes of animals and people driving". Of course, not everyone will love all the styles, and maybe some of the parts of this movie will be just "too much" for some of the viewers - but it is a significant artistic work, and I'll suggest patience when that happens. Gets better! Originally a man named Boonmee approached the abbot of a Buddhist temple in his home town, claiming he could clearly remember his own previous lives while meditating. The abbot was so impressed with Boonmee's ability that he published a book called A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives in 1983. And the director read the book... by the time he finished it, Boonmee had died, and the original idea to adapt the book into a biographical film about Boonmee was abandoned. More personal film is the result using the book's structure and content as inspiration. Lovely way to be amused, mystified, seduced, moved, saddened on this visually gorgeous journey. P.S. You want more... here it is... http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_date/2009/a_letter_to

• John B

  
  A very compelling movie falls off a cliff. Just what are we supposed to make of that ending. Was that an ending or did you just run out of film? Disappointment at the end of a nice flight.

• Ryan M

  
  8.2/10 I didn't enjoy "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives". I embraced it with open arms and an open mind. I wanted to like it; and I did. The film it designed as something very, very interesting. It is an experimental film with ambitions that go… More
  8.2/10 I didn't enjoy "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives". I embraced it with open arms and an open mind. I wanted to like it; and I did. The film it designed as something very, very interesting. It is an experimental film with ambitions that go way, way beyond that of standard Hollywood-fare, but then again, I watch movies similar to this one so that I can escape all that is main-stream and simply be an admirer. "Uncle Boonmee" is not a great film. But it is a very good one. The film depicts a solid approximation of a life and a death; that being of the elderly, sickly Uncle Boonmee. Not only is this man aging, but he is also dying from kidney-failure. He lives alongside his loved ones and intends to do this until the end. He often has philosophical discussions with both his family and anyone else who surrounds him. One night, he is visited by the ghost of his dead wife as well as a sprite-like creature that is his son; who takes on the form of a Chewbacca-esque being. The two characters literally bring something else to the table. Boonmee recalls his past lives. At one moment he's an ox evading his captors and another a horny catfish. He has nonetheless lived multiple lives; and must return and die in the place of his first life where he was initially given the grand gift of life. The place is a cave; a place so surreal and magical that you can almost touch it, and it carries the qualities of a dream perfectly. In the cave, to complete the genius, there are blind, white little fish that may be more than they seem to be; much like everything else in the film. The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. It deserves the award. It's a wonderful, intelligent film that goes where few modern filmmakers have gone before. It is passionately made and arrives at perhaps the wrong time; where people are no longer appreciative of art such as this. However, I do believe that the serious movie-goers will admire it, because it exists not as entertainment, but as a pretty picture with more than enough symbolic messages. The film is based on a book that the abbot of a Buddhist temple wrote about a man that once visited him. The man's name was indeed Boonmee, and he could indeed recall his past lives. This left an impression on the abbot, and ultimately, that is why the book was written and this is why the film came to be. Watching it was like partaking in such rich, healing meditation; and it was a pleasant, slow-moving experience. I do believe that it might improve on multiple viewings. Some people might not even want to see it once. It's such a slow film that one would describe it as dragging "on-and-on for what seemed like hours". These thoughts did indeed cross my mind at one point, but then I stopped and took a moment to breathe in the fumes of this film; and the more I thought, the more I felt; and finally, the more I got out of watching it. I recommend this film to thinkers, appreciators, and anyone who likes how film used to be. This is a different film with a quirky sense of humor and an oddly thoughtful philosophical outlook on its topics. People will be left scratching their heads over what it's trying to say or what it all "means", but I'll let them know: this is not necessary. The film is about how one man chooses to spend his last days, recalling his past lives. I've come to the conclusion that "Uncle Boonmee" is art; high art. And it deserves to be seen. But that does not mean that you will like it; some will hate it. But we live in a world where nearly every movie is crude in its exploitation of noise, profanity, violence, sex, nudity, drugs, or whatnot. And now we get a film like this to save us the trouble of looking through the muck. It's not worth searching. And if you share my feelings about today's cinema, then you will share that of the film's director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. He is a deep meditator and thinker. He's made a really good movie out of his material. I like him for that. And it makes me want to see more out of him. Here we go.

• Mike T

  
  I couldn't even begin to interpret what director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is saying with this film, but I enjoyed it despite (and partially because) of that fact. This is a submersive, controlled experience with imagery that is as surprising as it is beautiful. The strangeness… More
  I couldn't even begin to interpret what director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is saying with this film, but I enjoyed it despite (and partially because) of that fact. This is a submersive, controlled experience with imagery that is as surprising as it is beautiful. The strangeness of the material never overshadows the gentle, focused execution, and this is a movie that I'd like to revisit.

• Stephen E

  
  "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" is a real mixed bag. It's far too strange and off-putting for modern audiences to appreciate it, but at the same time, it's not even great cinema. In its entire two-hour run time, not much happens. There are some… More
  "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" is a real mixed bag. It's far too strange and off-putting for modern audiences to appreciate it, but at the same time, it's not even great cinema. In its entire two-hour run time, not much happens. There are some haunting shots (like the black, red-eyed figures slowly moving through the forest) and a handful of bizarre scenarios, but that's about it. The pacing is questionable and at the end you aren't really left deep in thought. It doesn't feel like there's much of a point to these images, which is a problem. Personally, "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" entranced me from start to finish, but I didn't enjoy it, and I surely wouldn't watch it again.

• Quinto W

  
  I'm uncertain about how I feel about this film, but one thing I am sure about is that it's definitely interesting. It doesn't have a story so much as it has ideas and emotions, and that is perfectly okay, but I can't help feel that I missed something; something in… More
  I'm uncertain about how I feel about this film, but one thing I am sure about is that it's definitely interesting. It doesn't have a story so much as it has ideas and emotions, and that is perfectly okay, but I can't help feel that I missed something; something in me was not moved.

• Daisy M

  
  Winner of last year Palme D'or, Thais Movie Uncle BoonMee Who CAn Recall His Past Lives, was such a torture for me to watch. The story of a man who was dying, and as result he recalled his past lives and was visited by ghosts and spirits. I remained with so many questions, that I… More
  Winner of last year Palme D'or, Thais Movie Uncle BoonMee Who CAn Recall His Past Lives, was such a torture for me to watch. The story of a man who was dying, and as result he recalled his past lives and was visited by ghosts and spirits. I remained with so many questions, that I could not trace from the movie.Who the heck was Uncle Boonmee anyways? Was he the princess that we saw in one scene and that disappeared? Did he reincarnate or become a ghost? Was he the monk at the end of the movie, or the beast at the beginning? All the actors were not real, they spoke with a single tone through the entire movie. Most sequences last too long,making no sense at all. It did not create a particular feeling or to keep the interest of the audience.Here and there it had some good switches which I guess was intentionally shot, but none of this made it a fine piece of art,it missed something else, and there was nothing, just two hours of boredom.

• Robert F

  
  It's barely a film; more a floating world. To watch it is to feel many things -- balmed, seduced, amused, mystified.

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