SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY

In a first fragment, love hesitantly flowers in a traditional country clinic, while in a second, human imperfection warms the architecturally white spaces of a modern city hospital. Unusual in form, the film weaves a sensuous spell, in which daily life unfolds vividly even in the apparent gaps, and in which time and the telling of story matters less than being present with what is here now. CP

Think of it as a series of paintings that talk to each other, raptly and quietly Financial Times
As delicate, complex and strange as any rare orchid Channel 4 Film
Richly rewarding hall-of-mirrors Little White Lies
A poem on screen The Guardian

by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2006 / 105 minutes / Thailand / Thai with English subtitles
a strong sex reference

Two love stories, two different times

Commissioned for a festival celebrating the 250th birthday of Mozart, this is a playful film. It toys with the senses, and also with our sense of time, place, memory and environment. It favours the magical over the logical and asks us to explore the overlooked, sometimes vivid spaces between the gaps.

The first part is set in a traditional, country clinic where love is hesitantly blossoming. Weerasethakul lived in such a place as a child and the love story is an imagining of his own parents’ courtship. The environment both frustrates and delights. Stilted conversation in dimly-lit offices and daily life lived in slow motion contrasts sharply with the zinging vibrance of the natural surroundings – bird song, rare orchids, even a solar eclipse.
In counterpoint, the second love story unfolds in the cold, clean white spaces of a modern city hospital. This is a world where nature is seen only through the double-glazing and not heard above the hum of the machines. Personal interactions however are livelier and this pair of lovers finally get to enjoy the sort of embrace the first pair could only ever dream of.
And of course, the two separate parts mix and merge in a yin-yang interconnected sort of way. Just as the Buddhist monk character might mix it up in one of his longed for DJ sets. For Mozart lovers, spot the magic flute, towards the end...! CP

Director’s Point of View

A project that will explore how we remember, how our sense of happiness can be triggered by seemingly insignificant things. It is an experiment in recreation of my parents’ lives before I was born, which also includes the lives of those who have touched me in the present day.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Critical Thoughts

• Syndromes and a Century is a poem on screen: a film of ideas and visual tropes that upends conventional narrative expectations, not out of a simple desire to disconcert but to break through the carapace of normality, to give us the knight's-move away from reality that the Russian formalists said was the prerogative of art - 
Peter Bradshaw  The Guardian
  
  
• Don't watch it for plot, or character development; revel instead in its evocation of warm, wistful moods, its sly sense of humour and its fierce commitment to creating a mystical cinema far from the orthodoxies of both independent and mainstream cinema - Sukhdev Sandhu Daily Telegraph
  

• Think of it as a series of paintings that talk to each other, raptly and quietly Financial Times

• As delicate, complex and strange as any rare orchid Channel 4 Film

• Richly rewarding hall-of-mirrors Little White Lies

Online Resources

Full cast, crew & music credits: http://www.kickthemachine.com/works/Syndromes.html 
or Oct 2007 Sight & Sound
Further analysis at: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/4030


Audience Reactions

Replies  10      9      8      7      6      5      4      3      2      1      0      Average 

 81            4      2      4     11    15    12    12     7      4      4      6       49.1

• Very very different  -  so thank you committee for showing something cutting edge that we'd never normally see
• Botany gets it one point
• Disastrous!
• I didn’t get in the zone - sorry
• Some interesting moments, but give me a good narrative anytime
• Good photography of lovely trees
• ‘New’ World Cinema a taste I have yet to acquire!
• Very interesting, but didn’t click with me.