Tropical Malady (2004) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
“I love Apichatpong’s films very much. You can see how he makes surrealism in a religious atmosphere, not in Dali’s way. Apichatpong’s surrealism is of course about everyday life, it’s like a poem. He always put several actors, several drastically different characters in everyday life, but they’re strangers to each other. Surrealism always put two things in a place where they’ve never met : a tiger and a monk for example. The beautiful thing in Apichatpong’s films is that he puts several levels together such as surrealism, mystical and naturalism, and it becomes a very personal satire. Everyday life, transe and reborn are a part of the asian way of feeling things. It’s the same in Tsaï Ming-liang films where the character is looking for a clock and then clocks are invading the walls. Everyday life becomes a transe and it’s got to do with asian ceremonies and oral culture. Asian films are interesting because we live in a chaotic society but also in a system that never finishes. We live in an unpredictable world, as if we were in a Quantum leap everyday. There is so many paradoxes coming from the confrontation between traditional arts and aritotelician science, between post-industry and pre-industry, and that’s why asian cinema is so diverse and why every filmmaker can create his own system.”

By Bastien Hader in Berlin on February 16th, 2008

More informations about Tropical Malady.