Cannes Review: Apitchatpong Weerasethakul's 'Cemetery Of Splendour'

Most films are domestic animals: cats or dogs. Some particularly beautiful ones might be horses or dolphins. But amongst the Fidos, the Fluffys and the Flippers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Cemetery of Splendour" is a Northern White Rhino, the most endangered species in the world. This is not just because Weerasethakul is utterly unique among filmmakers, the kind of director who makes films so singular it's impossible to think of how you would even go about mimicking his style (or indeed "describing" his "plots"; pity your humble reviewer). It is also because the mood 'Cemetery' evokes, a sense of alien wonder that seems not to sink in from the outside but to spring from the bass-deep pit of your own stomach, came to me as perhaps the purest expression of cinema as it was meant to be seen: in a theater, in the dark, in the quiet, inspiring and requiring a quality of distraction-free attention that is simply disappearing as a mode of interaction with...