In a Nutshell. Mini reviews of movies old and new. No fuss. No spoilers. And often no sleep.

Thursday 10 August 2017

Cemetery of Splendour (2015)

On the surface it's perhaps not quite as strange as Apichatpong's Uncle Boonmee... (2010) film, but Cemetery has a similar elusive quality infused within every part of it, the kind that makes pinning down what exactly makes it different from other works very hard for me to translate into words.
The plot involves a female volunteer at a makeshift hospital in which a large number of soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping disorder, while outside the facility other soldiers carry out construction work, digging up the beautiful landscape. The temporary ward shares the space it occupies with the living memories of people with a rich but distant history. The watchful camera, slow-paced lifestyle and complete lack of non-diegetic music all contribute to a feeling that something spiritually and culturally profound is unfolding, and to discern it we need only become sensitive to its equivocal splendour.

3 funeral lights out of 5

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