Syndromes and a Century (15)
- Consumer Advice: Contains a strong sex reference
- Run time: 1 hour 46 mins
- Language: Thai
- Genre: Drama
- Release date: 21st September 2007
- Starring: Arkanae Cherkam, Jaruchai Iamaram, Sakda Kaewbuadee
- Directed by: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
- Distributor: BFI (UK Wide)
Plot Synopsis
Syndromes and a Century establishes young Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul as one of the most exciting talents in world cinema today. This, his fifth feature, is a spellbinding Buddhist meditation on the mysteries of love and attraction, the workings of memory, and the ways in which happiness is triggered. Mesmerisingly beautiful to look at, it is also laced with wonderful absurd humour.
Dubbed ‘a hospital comedy of a somewhat metaphysical bent’, Syndromes and a Century is inspired by Weerasethakul’s memories of his parents, both doctors, and of growing up in a hospital environment. The two central characters, based on the film-maker’s parents before they started dating, interact with a bizarre array of professional colleagues and patients with their various strange maladies, including an elderly haematologist who hides her whisky supplies in a prosthetic limb, a Buddhist monk suffering from bad dreams about chickens, and a young monk who once dreamed of being a DJ and now forms an intense bond with a singing dentist whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his dead brother.
It is a film of two halves – the first set in a sunlit rural hospital amid lush, tropical vegetation, the second in a hi-tech urban clinic under fluorescent lighting. Certain scenes from the first half are replayed in the second – almost but not quite identically. According to Weerasethakul, the mind doesn’t work like a camera but often blends past and present. In a statement made before shooting began, he describes his approach as follows: ‘Time is collapsed to mimic a pattern of remembering and to manifest my belief in reincarnation. We are constantly reborn, amassing our karma, and we learn from our successive lives in order to one day finally experience a true happiness.’