# Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

This movie was both too much and too little all at once. There were magical moments unlike anything else I’ve seen in movies, confusing moments that had me in uneasy laughter (that pond scene), and parts of this will stick with me forever.

However, all of that is found within a movie that is extremely slow and doesn’t seem to have a lot to say. Many of the movie’s scenes are homages to earlier forms of cinema, meaning that it takes beautiful locales and shoots them in boxy, static, straight-on shots with deliberately wooden acting and pacing.

There’s a journey through the jungle into a cave. I was spellbound by this sequence, and was ready to talk to my wife about how I came around on this movie and kind of liked it. What an amazing ending for this movie!

Except the perfect ending wasn’t the ending. Instead it kept going for a slow and surreal ending that returned to static, boxy shots.

I appreciate the vibes of mid-career David Lynch, around the time he started getting real weird but before he seemed to lose all interest in coherent narratives.

I regret picking this for our film club.