The Favorites - Syndromes and a Century (#83)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Syndromes and a Century (2006/Thailand/dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul) appeared at #83 on my original list.

What it is • Two doctors meet, a man and a woman: she is interviewing him for a job at the hospital. They discuss his military history, he mentions he plays basketball, she asks him to hold out his fist (I've never quite been clear on why - to test his nerves?), and she asks him what "DDT" stands for (the best he can do is "Destroy Dirty Things"). This happens twice in the movie, at the beginning and then again halfway through. The first time we tend to stay closer to the woman when the interview ends, the second time we stick mostly with the man. In both cases, we also spend time with other characters in the hospital, and in a few cases scenes are repeated, or rather echoed with slight differences. As each half moves along, however, they grow further and further apart, creating a sense of a fork in the road in which the two paths lead in very, very different directions. Oh, and I've neglected to mention one crucial detail. The hospital of the first half is a rural clinic, surrounded by sun-dappled ferns and characterized by an easygoing, pleasant mood. The hospital of the second half - despite the presence of the same characters - seems to exist in an alternate universe: it is a massive structure with white walls and ceilings, heavily staffed and located in the heart of a city. This clever dual structure provides the skeleton of Syndromes and a Century's structure, but the meat on those bones is composed of individual moments: humorous and poignant character interactions, lingering shots of people and places, near-abstract depictions of afternoon eclipses in the countryside or ominous tubes sucking all the smoke from a basement room. Syndromes and a Century exists primarily to absorb us in a sense of space, or rather two very different spaces.

Why I like it •

Falling into the Future 2006 - 2009 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 32

Thirty-second chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 32: Falling into the Future"

Falling into the Future

Today we end quietly, mournfully, and, I think, beautifully. Many of these clips deserve that adjective - there is a sinuous grace to the films in this chapter, a kind of painterly impression as if figures and backgrounds on a canvas were being animated. As if, in a way, we had returned to the very roots of cinema, yet with a memory of where we'd been. This is less death than a kind of anti-birth, which makes the final clip deeply appropriate. It might help here to explain that my storytelling sensibility trends neither optimistic nor flatly pessimistic, but rather toward the tragic. Tragic conclusions are at once sad and deeply transcendent - not a happy ending, but still a glorious one. This certainly describes the last two clips, over which I played a single soundtrack - the music derives from the second film but works equally well with the first. Together they form a kind of swan song, and so this chapter's final moments can stand with the 40s dream chapter and the lightning montage ending the 60s episode as one of the most unified and telling moments in the video series.

Images from Syndromes and a Century

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Syndromes and a Century. The enticing visuals, considered apart from the film's intriguing themes and structure (though of course they are all inextricably linked), are worth celebrating, so I present, unadorned, images from the movie:

Syndromes and a Century

Syndromes and a Century touches reality only tangentially – like a dream, or a memory. Nothing in it is “un-realistic” so to speak, and nothing that happens is fanciful or even especially dramatic. The film, directed by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, begins quietly and maintains this peaceful air for about an hour. A female doctor is interviewing a male doctor, asking him questions that will pertain to his job – as well as a few curveballs. Both doctors leave the room and walk out onto the deck of the clinic, a pleasant little building deep in the country. The camera pushes forward to frame the meadow behind them, and remains on this composition as they leave the picture and their indistinct chatter continues softly in the background. A feeling of nostalgia, of a deeply buried connection one cannot quite put a finger on, may wash over the viewer. If one gets into this groove, the movie flows along quite nicely, like a calm boat ride down that river in Wind in the Willows. However, as in that story, there’s a Wild Wood – and a Wide World – on the horizon, distant as that possibility seems while enjoying the quiet pleasures of this opening.