Butler's Maridon Museum will present the 2010 Thai film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ) on November 10, as the final installment of the museum's Thai Film Series. A 2011 New York Times review provides a summary:
Boonmee is suffering from kidney disease, and as he goes briskly about his everyday business, accompanied by his sister-in-law, Jen (Jenjira Pongpas), and the young men he has hired as caretakers, it becomes clear that he is saying goodbye. His present life is shadowed by regrets, only some of which are alluded to, like his actions during a long-ago period of political violence. One evening, as he and Jen are having dinner outdoors, they are joined by the specters of Boonmee’s long-lost son (Geerasak Kulhong), who has assumed the shape of a man-size monkey, and of Boonmee’s wife (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk), whose appearance is more traditionally movie-ghostlike.The movie starts at 6:00 pm and reservations are required to be made by phone: 724-282-0123. It will be presented by Slippery Rock University professor Dr. William Covey.
The living and the dead converse calmly and matter-of-factly, as if nothing especially unusual were going on, and this undramatic blending of the bizarre and the banal is one of Mr. Weerasethakul’s signatures. Though he is heir to a long tradition of cinematic surrealism, he does not traffic in shock or discomfort, or seek to upend the tyranny of conventional logic. Rather, he uses the illusion-making powers of the medium to propose, politely if also mischievously, an alternative way of seeing things.
The Maridon Museum is an Asian art museum at 322 N. McKean St. in downtown Butler (map) that runs film series periodically throughout the year, in addition to art classes, book club meetings, and its regular exhibits.
