This master filmmaker realised his work was meaningless. So he made more art

Sydney Morning Herald

3 days ago

When he won the Palme d'Or with Uncle Boonme in 2010, he was approached to make independent American films – but preferred writing his own and working with his trusted producers. So, was he never offered a Hollywood superhero movie?
'I wish,' Weerasethakul says. 'That would make my day.'
But he quickly plays down his interest.
'I really like special effects so if I do it, it will be to learn that.'
For the new installation, Weerasethakul wanted to create 'something about movement, about components of cinema, about activating space that is not normally there'.
It continues one of the masters of slow cinema's fascination with dreams, nature, time, ghosts and memory.
After earlier versions were exhibited in Bangkok and Japan, Weerasethakul recruited two artists from Bangkok experimental studio DuckUnit, Rueangrith Suntisuk and Pornpan Arayaveerasid, to create a new version with him for the MCA.
He says installations allow him to create a different relationship between the viewer and the image than he can with a film.
'In cinemas, you just become zombies,' he says. 'Just hypnotised.'
While he tries to break that down by making audiences more aware of time than in a conventional film – using such techniques as a meditative pace, unusual sounds and unexpected framing – an installation lets the viewer create their own experience.
MCA senior curator Jane Devery says Weerasethakul is rare among artists for having equal status in film and visual arts.
'With film, it's generally 90 minutes long, you sit in a theatre and you're kind of directed how to behave and how to experience the work, whereas with installation the viewer has greater agency,' she says. 'You can choose what to look at, how much time you spend here, how you move around the work. So it's a very different experience.'
When he last visited for the opening of an installation at the Sydney Biennale in 2016, Weerasethakul was planning to make his first film outside Thailand because of concerns about censorship at a politically volatile time.
That became Memoria, which had Swinton as a Scottish expat in Colombia searching for the source of strange booming sound that only she could hear.
Weerasethakul is no longer worried about Thailand authorities blocking artistic expression.
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'Questions [about] authority, the monarchy and all these taboos shifted really quickly and there are more younger people allowed to lead,' he says. 'As an older generation, I used to lose hope in living there and so-called freedom. Now it's much more open.'
Despite that change, Weerasethakul is still planning to shoot his next film outside Thailand.
He will shoot what's reportedly called The Fountains of Paradise, inspired by writer Arthur C. Clarke's life, in Sri Lanka with Swinton starring again.
'It's going to be focused on Sigiriya, this mountain rock in Sri Lanka,' Weerasethakul says. 'That's a big fascination for me.
'In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Richard Dreyfuss was really attracted to this mountain. It's the same for me.'
Swinton has become such a muse that she also features in a new installation opening in Amsterdam next month.
'Because of her playfulness, it's almost like she's water or something I can sculpt and play together,' he says.