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Top Critics (19)
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DVD (4)
This is a film that wants to be interesting, and it certainly is that. Whether you want to dine with the ghost and the monkey-man or not, they bring a new perspective to the table.
As is to be expected, Weerasethakul frequently abandons the story for trancelike contemplations of nature, but never before in his work has the device felt more purposeful.
While the result is pretty much the definition of a film that should be experienced, not explained, there's no sense here that Weerasethakul is being difficult for difficult's sake, or even attempting to conceal his mysteries.
It playfully invokes both the lifestyle and animistic beliefs of the Northeast country folk, and the primitive magic of early Thai cinema, relating both of these to his musings on reincarnation.
If you are open, even in fancy, to the idea of ghosts who visit the living, this film is likely to be a curious but rather bemusing experience.
What would pass for longueurs in another director's movie become commands for rumination here.
Uncle Boonmee is about ... the moments when our worlds expand; when our outlines turn out to be more porous than we thought.
Uncle Boonmee is a film to be experienced for its immediacy and thought upon for its ineffability.
Fits neatly into Weerasethakul's cinema-shaking oeuvre of beautiful experimentation. [Blu-ray]
One to absorb, to wonder at, and, perhaps most significantly, to give exposure to lines of thinking that one might not be familiar with.
Beguiling, frequently baffling and frustrating.
Weerasethakul's sincerity is evident, though the film's meditative pace and vague philosophical undertones will not be for everyone.
A stunningly beautiful visual experimental Buddhist film.
Even if it can't be recommended to everyone, [it] blossoms inside you the longer you allow it to.
[Compared to Weerasethakul's earlier work] it's easier to get a handle on the edges, more opaque in the middle, and not as radical in its ideas or its execution.
The movie isn't paced as a conventional narrative; its story imperceptibly droops, like a heavy frond.
To visit with these characters is like watching what seems to be a slideshow of unrelated events, memories and reincarnation fantasies, but what connects them is a hypnotic quality and a serene embrace of both life and death.
Uncle Boonmee is a film that feels like some sort of skewed satire on the sort of drivel people will digest as art...
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