Last year we decided to limit our exposure to what we called "sensory assault movies." You know the kind: films packed with fights, explosions, collapsing buildings, car crashes, battle scenes — i.e. lots of death and destruction. Life is too short, we decided, to spend so much time bludgeoning our eyes, ears, skin, hearts, and brains with toxic films that water the seeds of violence and leave us depleted of energy to do anything else. We put out a plea to filmmakers asking that they give us some slow, intimate dramas where events unfold in the fullness of time. We said: "We will welcome with open arms more chances to experience the wonders of silence, reverence, and mystery in the local cineplex."
Cemetery of Splendor is the kind of film we are looking for. Thai writer and director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's fourth film slowly unfolds its manifold mysteries and mesmerizes us with its visual beauty and spiritual happenings.
The drama is set in a country hospital that used to be a school. All the patients are soldiers who have a mysterious sleeping sickness. Healing lights are used at night to comfort these men whose dreams often agitate them. This quiet sanctuary is a peaceful place — unlike many modern hospitals in the West.
Jen (Jenjira Pongpas Widner) is a volunteer nurse with a lame leg who tenderly looks after one sleeping soldier she has singled out for her ministrations. Also present in this place is Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), a psychic who is helping family members communicate with their loved ones. She enables Jen to talk with Itt (Banlop Lomnoi) who wakes up after she gives him a bath in his bed. He is very curious about her American husband who is a retired soldier. After several chats together, she envisions him as her son.
To savor and appreciate this gifted Thai director's nuanced films, you have to slow down and put yourself in sync with the quiet rhythms of the story. Weerasthakul accepts that spiritual beings and ancestors wander and even interact with human beings in the ordinary everyday world. Two Laotian princesses who look like a couple of fashionable ladies visit an astonished Jen who marvels at their admission that they have been dead for a long time.
Keng is convinced that the soldiers have fallen asleep because they messed around in an ancient cemetery of kings and have been punished by having their energy taken from them by the spirits of the dead. Those who admire such mystical elements in Weerasthakul might be taken aback by the earthy and erotic scenes involving a soldier's erection and Keng's unconventional healing ministrations which bring tears to Jen's eyes.
Cemetery of Splendor moves gracefully through a world of sleeping, dreams, healing, and visitations by other-worldly beings.