Bored to Bliss

"Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives"is the kind of film that an ordinary audience will find so boring that they'll either leave halfway through or focus their eyes on the dull glow of their smartphone. But this film by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is, if you're patient enough, a methodic, dream-like meditation on life, death and karmic reinvention.
Uncle Boonmee is a Thai man suffering from kidney failure who  has enlisted his sister-in-law and a couple of young men to care for him while he bustles on with his regular duties on his tamarind and bee farm. One night, Boonmee's deceased wife appears at the dinner table followed shortly by his vanished son, who has taken on the form of a kind of mythic ape. As Boonmee's time of death creeps out of the ubiquitous tangled jungle we are taken on an almost lackadaisical tour through a few surreal vignettes, including one where a princess is seduced by a charming catfish.
Mr Weerasethakul has a knack for this sort of filmic magical realism. As wonderfully bizarre and sometimes startlingly strange things go on his characters, behaving as if in a dream, don't react like you'd expect. No one screams when an ape man sits down at the dinner table; they offer him leftovers and show him photo albums. The result for me was almost like when I've finally finished a boulder problem that's felt impossible for years; a feeling of blooming content.
"Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives"is well worth it's two hours on the screen, though I did check the time once or twice. If you're a fan of David Lynch or Terrence Malick, I'm prepared to say you'll enjoy this film, but if your favorite filmmaker is David Fincher, you'll be bored to death and probably quite annoyed by that catfish.
Uncle Boonmee trailer