Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Films Illuminate the Soul of Thailand

“Any kind of movie, I was so receptive,” he said.

But it was Hollywood’s science fiction boom in the 1980s, as well as the novels of Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke, that raised the creative stakes for Weerasethakul at a formative age. 

“Thailand is really US-centric in terms of information,” he said. “I was totally [into movies] because of how they were the opposite of how I grew up—this small town—and it was like a totally different world and imagination.”

Weerasethakul’s imaginative world is one that is—for all its visual beauty and existential headiness—markedly grounded. Whether traversing the subject of love affairs (Blissfully Yours) or reincarnation and generational trauma (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), or experiencing degrees of consciousness unbeknownst to others (Memoria), Weerasethakul’s films carry a distinct attraction to the tenor and terrain of Thailand, where he is based. In an increasingly globalized film industry less keen on taking risks, such a personalized aesthetic risks alienating industry gatekeepers. But perhaps due to their psychological idiosyncrasies, or the utter clarity of his aesthetic vision, Weerasethakul’s films are some of the most celebrated of the 21st century—winning the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes in 2002 for Blissfully Yours and the Jury Prize in 2004 for Tropical Malady before taking the festival’s highest honor in 2010 for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. 

All of these films are notable for their reconfiguring of the sensory environment. Scenes are framed as sharp as portraits or assume the protagonist’s point of view. Rumbles, warbles, and sighs take on as much significance as flesh and blood characters. 

They’re all also in some way concerned with the social reality that defines Weerasethakul’s birthplace. “I think there's some kind of obsession with your own environment,” he said. “There's this sense of trying to try to understand, which I was not before. So I think film allows me to kind of discover or investigate; for me, without film, without a camera, I wouldn't do it. Early on, when I was in Chicago, I knew I couldn't live there, and I could not synchronize or use cinema to document Chicago somehow.”

Weerasethakul’s path to SAIC was architecture, which was his focus in Thailand. It’s a field that “resembles film in its allowance for dreaming,” he said. Designing structures also mirrors the movies in that one’s imaginative vision has to be paired with the collaborative practicality of a crew. He enrolled in prerequisites to learn the skills he needed to work on his film portfolio, then quit his architecture studies to reapply for a master of fine arts in the School’s Film, Video, New Media, and Animation department. 

Weerasethakul remembers SAIC as a place of great freedom and camaraderie. “The kind of film that I want to make … is something very personal,” he said. “It was really a right match, because you’re just allowed to be in the dark room and do all these experiments yourself.”

There was also no internet at the time, he emphasized, so students’ relationship to the physicality of film was more prominent. 

“With real film … you can see physically this length of film represents how much time you have on the screen,” he said. “I appreciate and I still carry this with me now, and I try to share this excitement of the physicality of film.” This enthusiasm was fostered by tutelage from film faculty members Daniel Eisenberg and Christopher Sullivan, but also the sound artist Lou Mallozzi.

“But the most influential? I have to say Shellie Fleming,” Weerasethakul said. In addition to calming his nerves and encouraging him to be more open in his filmmaking, the late professor and artist taught him to view film as an exchange of empathy. This empowered Weerasethakul to remain in the personal realm of filmmaking while honing his instincts to make distinct aesthetic choices. From this period came the 1996 short documentary Like the Relentless Fury of the Pounding Waves, which rearranged sound, light, and photography—the core elements of film—to investigate how people’s lives are connected by radio. 

In both its experimental construction and its communal tone rife with myth-making, the film would prove influential in Weerasethakul’s development just a few years later, after he completed his master of fine arts in 1998 and moved back to Thailand. His breakout film, 2000’s Mysterious Object at Noon, begins with a simple folktale only to refract it over two years and dozens of interviews with Thai citizens who fill in, correct, and expand upon its premise. Discussing the work in a 2022 profile for the New Yorker, the critic Hilton Als described Weerasethakul as an uppermost purveyor of “slow cinema … movies that inspire reflection because they are unhurried but fluid, clear but framed by mystery.” 

Despite his accolades, Weerasethakul insists that he is not technically in the film industry—especially in the US. He has his own production company, Kick the Machine, which he founded in 1999 to “promote experimental and hybrid narrative filmmaking at home and abroad,” including his own. 

“It’s a different way of working, even in Thailand,” he said, noting the difference between the small-scale nature of his productions and many of the country’s commercial films. “I really value my independence and also my film family. I've been approached by studios both in Thailand and in the US, but it’s really a short communication because we know that it's a different way of thinking. You know, with a contract as big as a telephone book, and so it's impossible.” 

It’s debatable whether Weerasethakul started experimental film in Thailand, but he has certainly become its standard bearer, and his work gives others permission to follow their own path. Chalk it up to his commitment to viewing his home country through his own eyes—wherever he finds himself. 

“I think maybe that's why it's very comfortable here in Thailand,” he said. “There's a sense of community, maybe, that I can communicate.” ■