Apichatpong Weerasethakul installation at New Museum is an enlightening experience
New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through July 3, $12 (Thursdays free 7:00 – 9:00)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org
www.animateprojects.org
Light and memory are the driving forces behind Thai visual artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s exhilarating “Primitive” installation, on view at the New Museum through July 3. Over his nearly decade-long career, Weerasethakul has made beautiful, slow-paced, bittersweet films that combine dreamlike imagery with nature and deep personal introspection. In such works as Blissfully Yours (2002), Tropical Malady (2004), Syndromes and a Century (2006), and his latest, the subtly elegant Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), Weerasethakul creates involving, atmospheric tales that often include elements of magical realism while blurring the lines between past, present, and future. “Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Primitive” takes a similar course through a collection of nine interrelated short films set in the rural farming village of Nabua, the site of political and social upheaval and military intervention during the 1960s and ’70s. The hypnotic works, some screened in their own room, others shown en masse in a central area, meld fact and fiction, fantasy and reality. In Making of the Spaceship, members of the community build a time-travel clubhouse; in A Dedicated Machine, the resulting spaceship continuously rises in the distant horizon.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul explores reincarnation and transformation in multimedia installation
In I’m Still Breathing, teens run down a street and jump on a moving truck as a power-pop song by Modern Dog blasts away; in Phantoms of Nabua, a group of kids play around at night with a fireball, kicking it around until it reveals a projector behind a cloth screen. In An Evening Shoot, teens with a rifle pretend to shoot a friend walking through a grassy rice field, while in Nabua Song, a man pays tribute to Nabua’s military heroes. In the two-channel Primitive, a man relates a La Jetée–like story involving a legendary widow ghost, bathed in deep blacks and blurry reds. The slow, calm pace of the films are all interrupted by the crashing images and sounds of Nabua, as bolts of lightning rattle down from the sky, lighting up the village. According to Weerasethakul, “‘Primitive’ is about reincarnation and transformation. It’s a celebration of destructive force in nature and in us that burns in order to be reborn and mutate.” Take your time as you make your way around “Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Primitive,” an inventive, enlightening installation that offers myriad rewards, sometimes in the minutest of details, from one of the world’s most creative and innovative filmmakers. (Also on view at the New Museum is “Gustav Metzger: Historic Photographs,” David Medalla’s “Cloud Canyon no. 14,” and “Museum as Hub: The Incongruous Image Marcel Broodthaers and Liliana Porter.”)
Based on a true story that writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Maborosi, After Life) read about back in 1988, Nobody Knows is a heartwarming, heartbreaking film about four extraordinary half-siblings who must fend for themselves every time their mother takes off for extended periods of time. Japanese TV and pop star YOU makes her feature-film debut as Keiko, a young woman who has four kids by way of four different men. When she’s home, she shows affection for the children, but the problem is, she’s rarely home. Instead, twelve-year-old Akira (Yagira Yuya) must take care of the shy Kyoko (Kitaura Ayu), who handles the laundry; the troublemaker Shigeru (Kimura Hiei), who can’t follow the rules; and sweet baby Yuki (Shimizu Momoko), who likes chocolates and squeaky shoes. At first, it is charming and uplifting watching how Akira handles the complicated situation — the other kids are not allowed outside because the landlord will evict them if he finds out about them, and Akira even helps teach the family, who do not attend school — but as Keiko disappears for longer periods of time, the children’s lives grow more dire by the day as food and money start running out. Kore-eda, who also edited and produced this powerful picture, has created a moving, involving film that nearly plays like a documentary, avoiding melodramatic clichés and instead wrapping the audience up in the closeted life of four terrific kids whose tragic existence will ultimately break your heart. Nobody Knows is screening at MoMA on June 23 and 24 as part of the series “In Focus: IFC Films,” which concludes with a sneak peek of Errol Morris’s Tabloid (2010) on June 24 at 8:00.