Thai Auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul: A Slow Indescribable Challenge Worth Taking On
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, or Joe as he’s known by Westerners, is the most important figure in the history of Thai cinema, and for many, myself included, the only exposure to the country’s cinematic output at all. Yet Weerasethakul is not only famous for bringing Thai films to international audiences, but is also possibly the most prominent figure of experimental, ‘slow cinema’ currently working. Slow cinema is an aesthetic style that opposes itself stylistically in almost every way to the narrative Hollywood structures we as audiences are most accustomed to. It features long takes of redundant, everyday tasks, unanimated performances, and a pace that challenges our ever shrinking attention span. Other directors who fall into the category are Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, Béla Tarr, and directors previously written about on this very blog like Michelangelo Antonioni, Abbas Kiarostami, Chantal Akerman, and Theo Angelopoulos. While these directors’ collective filmographies share the ...
