Syndromes and a Century [2006] [DVD]

Although he studied filmmaking in the United States, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul seems almost to reinvent cinema with each new film. There is something very refreshing about the contemplative style of camera work and the associative approach to editing, an approach that feels like it doesn't belong to the standard lineages of cinematic technique, but doesn't feel like incompetence either -- it just feels like something very different from what one is used to. His approach in this film is not so much to tell a story as to evoke a memory (if you saw this film without knowing that it is based loosely on his recollection of what his parents told him about how they got together, it would still feel more like layers of memory than a present day unfolding). Loosely, you could say that the story is about (1) two people (the director's parents) who met in a hospital and got together, a few decades ago; and (2) how their connection is difficult to reconcile with modern day practices, that these two would not be likely to connect now. But there is much more to the film than this outline suggests -- it is also a meditation on the place of religion and religious practice in Thailand a few decades ago versus today (dialogue that made sense a few decades ago feels like a joke today; practices once believed in and revered are now, at best, thought of as techniques; aerobics replaces yoga; shrines to the Buddha are replaced by statues of military leaders, etc.); it is also an exploration of sound and how sound reveals places and the emptiness of the sound that occupies modernized buildings; it is also a reflection on filmmaking itself, that has non-actors who make clear that they are non-actors, and even refer offscreen to their awkwardness on screen. It is a densely layered film, with a lot going on that is not easily summarizable in terms of an overarching theme or narrative -- a fascinating film, that nevertheless requires a good deal of patience and reflection, not for those with short attention spans.

It's important to point out that the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul are clearly an acquired taste. This Thai director makes movies that bear only a passing resemblance to the kind of narrative-laced dramas with which audiences in the West are most comfortable and familiar. His works reflect a Buddhist philosophy of deep inner reflection and unhurried contemplation of the moment - and, thus, they demand patience and an open mind from the viewer. But those willing to sample the strange exotic brew that is "Syndromes and a Century" (the title itself is enigmatic) will find ample rewards in the consumption.

There's little point in trying to explain what "Syndromes and a Century" is "about," since it serves no purpose to think of a Weerasethakul film in such terms. As a largely impressionistic work, the movie is more concerned with mood, feeling and setting than it is with conventional drama. Watching a Weerasethakul film is a bit like trying to solve a puzzle for which very few clues are provided. The "story," such as it is, involves two doctors - a woman working in a rural clinic and a man working in a big-city hospital - and their various encounters with patients, lovers and colleagues. We're told that the story was inspired by the romance of Weerasethakul's parents, though the obscurity of its presentation renders that explanation virtually meaningless. Often, an earlier scene is enacted a second time, though in an entirely different setting and from an opposing angle. This leads to even more confusion on the part of the viewer.

But it is style, rather than plot, that is of primary importance here. "Syndromes and a Century" is comprised almost entirely of beautifully composed and rigorously sustained medium and long shots, with few close-ups, very little camera movement and only minimal editing within scenes. Thus, even though we may not always understand fully what is going on, we are lulled into the movie by the seductive, hypnotic rhythms and style of the filmmaking.

"Syndromes and a Century" is not as compelling as Weerasethakul's previous film, the lushly transcendent and utterly spellbinding "Tropical Malady," but it should definitely appeal to anyone with a taste for the enigmatic, the exotic and the abstract.

In Syndromes and a Century, Apichatpong Weerasethakul revisits the bifurcated structure of his earlier feature films, Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady as well as the fragmented, dissociative visual and aural images of his experimental short, The Relentless Fury of the Pounding Waves to create a languid, lyrical, organic, and contemplative exposition on the malleability and impermanence of a person's sense of place, a reality defined by a conflation of past and present, located both in the concreteness of geography and the ephemerality of memory. A chronicle of the parallel lives and quotidian encounters of a pair of physicians (presumably based on the filmmaker's parents) as well as an enterprising dentist named Dr. Ple (Arkanae Cherkam) who moonlights as a traditional ballad singer - ambiguously unfolding in either contemporaneity or temporal ellipsis - a female country doctor named Dr. Toey (Nantarat Sawaddikul) and a male city doctor and recently discharged military veteran named Dr. Nohng (Jaruchai Iamaram), the film is also an illustration of the recursiveness and atemporality of human behavior that not only reflects the intrinsic (and intuitive) repetition in the performance of mundane rituals, but also underscores the interconnectedness of a collective consciousness enabled by the accretive cycle of spiritual reincarnation: the performance of a staff psychological evaluation and physical examination prior to assignment to a hospital ward, the interactive complications of diagnosing and treating insular (and old-fashioned) monks, the integration of traditional and modern medicine in patient treatment, the intoxication of new love, the ache of longing, the inevitability of separation. Presented through a series of allusive, often complementary images - a visual theme that is figuratively reinforced in the transfixing image of the occluding eclipse that is subsequently repeated in the industrial image of smoke suction through the flue of a hospital exhaust system undergoing renovation, as well as literally through the film's penultimate sequences shot from the basement of a hospital where prosthetic limbs are fabricated and stored (the physical complementation of a disabled patient) - the film is an evocative and impressionistic meditation on the persistence - and indefinable elusiveness - of human memory.

This was a pleasure to watch. Quite unlike anything I've seen before. It is an impressionistic film, filled with Buddhist ideas and dwelling on several metaphysical concepts; on the cyclical nature of life, of time, of history; on the duality of reality and of the male and female halves of creation. There is no actual story or plot. The film is split into two halves. Each half is a reflection of the other with slight alterations. Reality viewed through the Looking Glass. It isn't a film that tells you things. It seeks to provoke thought, reflection, meditation and perhaps in the end a better understanding of life.

Both halves centre around medical staff working in Thailand. The first half is set in the near past, roughly 20-30 years ago. In a rural district hospital. The second half takes place in present day Thailand in a spanking new multi-story hospital in Bangkok. The actors are the same in both halves and they play roughly the same characters with the same names but in different settings.

In the first half, the lady doctor, Dr. Toey, interviews a male intern Dr. Nohng coming over from the army to work in the civilian sector. She is also dogged by a shy soldier who is besotted with her. Even as she turns him down, she remembers an earlier relationship with a handsome young Orchid Farmer whom she herself was attracted to but who was similarly interested in someone else. Cycles of unrequited love, never-ending. Meanwhile, the hospital's resident dentist croons Thai country ballads to his patients in an airy treatment room surrounded by banana palms and sunlight. In his free time, he performs at the local open air concerts. It is a bucolic setting filled with nostalgia for the recent past. The entire first half is filled with the sound of birds, crickets, rustling leaves and gently flowing water.

The second half again begins with the lady doctor, also called Dr. Toey, interviewing Dr. Nohng the army doctor who is coming over to work in the hospital. Unlike in the first half where he confesses to a fear of blood, Dr. Nohng is now a haematologist (blood specialist). The second half focuses more on Nohng's love life. Here love is reciprocated. He has a much more intimate relationship with his executive girlfriend who also wants him to move out with her to a less bustling city, out in the country, near the beach. The dentist no longer sings country ballads. He works in a sterile white and cold facility somewhere in the bowels of the modern city hospital. He spends his free time as an aerobics instructor. The soundscape here is sterile, filled with the mechanical hum of electrical appliances and soulless machines. Gentle Thai country ballads have given way to loud thumping rock music.

All throughout though, we see the mainstays of Thai society. Saffron robed monks coming to hospital for treatment. Always smiling and trailing their aura of peace. Young conscript soldiers dressed in plain green fatigues in the first half are replaced by young conscripts in newer jungle camouflage in the second. Hard to tell apart. Things change and yet things stay the same. Statues of the Buddha are everywhere. As are statues of the beloved King - regarded by practically all Thais as the embodiment of the ideal Buddhist King. Holdovers from the ancient past still remain. Even in medical practice. Senior doctors practise "Chakra Healing" without batting an eyelid even as they interpret CT-scans amidst all the paraphernalia of modern medicine. By using the same actors, and characters with the same names, in both halves, Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul also highlights how no matter how times and situations may change the people will always remain the same.

In both halves we also hear discussions on reincarnation. The concept may be foreign to many westerners but the discussions raise universal themes - how to heal relationships sundered by death; how to make peace with the past; given a chance to be reborn, and a choice of incarnations, which would be preferable? In this world, would it be better to be born male or female, rich or poor, human or animal? It is a simple film and for many a film about nothing at all. Yet it is the richest film I have seen in ages.

The film is in Thai. My only gripe with this DVD is that the English subtitles are permanently burnt onto the print and cannot be turned off. They are distracting, especially on rewatching. Otherwise it's a fine transfer from Strand in 1.78:1 widescreen (enhanced for widescreen TV).

I really wanted to admire this Thai film. Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a filmmaker who will take the time to create an intimacy between his characters and his audience, and that is a rare commodity. Syndromes and a Century is at times naturally inert, and at times slow and tedious but I just can't appreciate films whose premise is you either marvel and cherish them a lot or you're brain dead.

I am critical of this film on a number of levels. If you like ultra-slow, meandering films set in a boring garden, Syndromes and a Century is one for you.

There are many long scenes that add nothing to the story, such as a scene towards the beginning of a woman physician being filmed around a hospital city. There are some lovely airy Thai images but they are also monotonous. This film doesn't reward the ability to appreciate beauty, it rewards the ability to understand boredom.

Syndromes and a Century is an overrated, minor conceptual art film that moves at a snail's pace and spends too much time pondering its own feigned self importance.

I personally wasn't impressed, but a lot of people seem to enjoy this film. I would not recommend this film to you if you're expecting a meaningful story.