SECOND ENTRY: SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (2006)

I don't think I'll be going out on a limb to say that this film is the most 'experimental' of my ten entries. I discovered this film through one of the director's earlier movies called Troplical Malady. I discovered Tropical Malady through a now-defunct music/movie review website Stylus Magazine. I found Stylus to not only have a incredibly global focus to digging up interesting independent music, but also lend a certain indie-rock underground sensibility to their reviews of other cultural mediums, primarily films.

I had been injected with the counter-culture film bug for quite some time when I viewed Stylus' year-end film list a few years back, so most of the entries were familiar to me. But at number one on their list was Tropical Malady... directed by a Thai director named Apichatpong Weerasethakul... also nicknamed "Joe" if you're into the whole brevity thing (not kidding, that's his official nickname). The riveting review that compared the nearly dialogue-free second segment to the work of many legendary directors I admired compelled me to Netflix it... and I wasn't dissapointed. This was a unique style of filmmaking I was watching. Regardless of how meandering and patiently sequenced the plot was (and I still need to view it a second time to establish a real opinion on it), Tropical Malady's form, structure, and visuals seemed far more necessary for me to internalize than the romance at the foundation of the film.

A year or two later, Joe's next movie, Syndromes and a Century was released, and it played exclusively at the Gene Siskel Film Center. The two small screening rooms and academic setting of the venue (it's part of the Chicago Art Institute) demonstrates that the shows are for very particular tastes, and almost all of their screenings are not shown anywhere else, even at the the other Chicago-area art house theaters. If I only picked up Tropical Malady because of the praise of it on an obscure currently-inactive website, I can't imagine how the small crowd that watched Syndromes came to be aware of this movie.

Syndromes and a Century is divided into parts, one is in a rural setting in Thailand, perhaps set a few decades ago, and centered around a health clinic. The second part, through a thrilling but subtle transition, takes place in a modern urban setting in Thailand, and is set around a contemporary hospital. Each part contains similar characters, similar dialogue, and similar actors and actresses, but there are variations in the setting, in the forms of conversations, and the role the similar characters play. As the relationship between time and place meanders in all sorts of unexpected directions, 'Joe' fills this void with incredible imagery, humorous and touching situations, and an odd but compelling snapshot of society in Thailand, old and new.

Chicago Reader movie critic Jonathan Rosenbaum said the following:

"There's nothing here that resembles narrative urgency, but this is a quiet masterpiece, delicate and full of wonder."

His review at the time struck me, because if you are to release yourself, as a movie-goer, from the tether of the need for a narrative in a movie, Syndromes and a Century becomes a great experience. If the centrality of a movie is not in the plot, my situation as a film viewer is not necessarily more rewarding, but deeper. Syndromes doesn't offer a story; it offers an interaction of people with themselves and their surroundings, seeming to say that the simplicity of a beautiful shot of the Thai countryside juxtaposed with a slow haunting gradual close-up of a construction duct means something regarding the relationship of past and present that film can only begin to summarize creatively.

It sounds a little cliche, but words are really hard to describe this movie. In fact, the final point I want to make is that this film was commissioned by a foundation in Vienna to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composer Mozart's birth. The director was said to have structured his movie in the form of a Mozart fugue, yet there isn't a continuous classical soundtrack. If fact, there is a mix of Southeastern Asian pop music and regular strings throughout Syndromes and a Century. Rather a filmmaker was translating the basic structure of 'themes and a variation' essential to classical music forms and vigorously translating it into his own personal private film language. While I believe this movie can be appreciate without this final context, the mysteries it opens makes the film worth repeated viewings. If you try to think of a novel written with music, a painting of a song, or a ballet of an indie rock album, the comprehension of the creative space that kind of expression might open leaves room to see Syndromes of a Century with clear eyes.