Rabindranath Tagore, “Untitled (Architectural setting with a silhouetted figure),” ink on paper, 1929
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Although Rabindranath Tagore might be most well known for being the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, having given Mohandas Gandhi the name Mahatma, composing the national anthems of both Bangladesh and India (among more than two thousand other songs), and being a subject in Philip Glass’s epic opera Satyagraha, he also became a painter in his later years, beginning at the age of sixty. Several dozen of his paintings and drawings are on view at Asia Society through December 31 in the fascinating exhibition “Rabindranath Tagore: The Last Harvest.” Tagore once said, “Love is kindred to art, it is inexplicable. Duty can be measured by the degree of its benefit, utility by the profit and power it may bring, but art by nothing but itself. There are other factors of life which are visitors that come and go. Art is the guest that comes and remains. The others may be important, but art is inevitable.” Tagore’s works are filled with love, focusing on the human body, nature, animals, portraiture, and the environment, together forming a kind of captivating visual poetry. The exhibit, which runs through December 31, is supplemented with biographical information, music, and a documentary on Tagore made by India’s greatest filmmaker, Satyajit Ray. Also on view through the end of the year is “U-Ram Choe: In Focus,” a large kinetic sculpture of a fantastical creature the Korean artist calls “Custos Cavum.” Composed of steel, stainless steel, brass, aluminum, resin, CPUs, and motors, it at times seems to come alive, its myriad antenna-like extremities rising and twisting, its body appearing to breathe in and out. The excellent triumvirate of exhibitions at Asia Society is completed by the lightweight “Sarah Sze: Infinite Line,” but we don’t mean that in a negative way. The Boston-born, New York City-based artist, whose “Corner Plot” was installed at the Scholars’ Gate entrance to Central Park in 2006, uses paper, string, tape, twigs, mirrors, and found objects galore in creating fragile alternate universes built on memory. “I am interested in an object or image that plays with the state of its own existence,” she says. “In both drawing and sculpture I’m interested in the depiction of gravity and weightlessness as both an operative and a disorienting force.” Be careful where you walk when making your way around Sze’s engaging world, which continues at Asia Society through March 25.
Winner of last year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, Thai writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is an elegiac meditation on memory, transformation, death, and rebirth, a fascinating integration of the human, animal, and spirit worlds. Uncle Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) is dying of kidney failure, being tended to by his Laotian helper, Jaai (Samud Kugasang). Boonmee is joined by his dead wife’s sister, Jen (Jenjira Pongpas), in his house in the middle of the jungle. Boonmee and Jen have nearly impossibly slow conversations that seem to go nowhere, just a couple of very simple people not expecting much excitement out of what’s left of their lives. Even when Boonmee’s long-dead wife, Huay (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk), and his long-missing son, Boonsong (Geerasak Kulhong), now a hairy ghost monkey covered in black fur and with two laserlike red eyes, suddenly show up, Boonmee and Jen pretty much just go with the flow. Weerasethakul maintains the beautifully evocative pace whether Jaai is draining Boonmee’s kidney, the characters discuss Communism, Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee) questions his monkhood, a princess (Wallapa Mongkolprasert) has sex with a catfish, or they all journey to a cave in search of another of Boonmee’s past lives. The film, which was shot in 16mm and was inspired by a 1983 book called A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives, is part of the Primitive Project, Weerasethakul’s multimedia installation that also includes the short films A Letter to Uncle Boonmee and Phantoms of Nabua. Weerasethakul, who gained a growing international reputation with such previous works as Blissfully Yours (2002), Tropical Malady (2004), and Syndrome and a Century (2006) and has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Khon Kaen University and an MFA in filmmaking from the Art Institute of Chicago, is a master storyteller who continues to challenge viewers with his unique visual language and subtly effective narrative techniques.
Filmed on location in and around Tehran’s Azadi Stadium and featuring a talented cast of nonprofessional actors, Jafar Panahi’s Offside is a brilliant look at gender disparity in modern-day Iran. Although it is illegal for girls to go to soccer games in Iran — because, among other reasons, the government does not think it’s appropriate for females to be in the company of screaming men who might be cursing and saying other nasty things — many try to get in, facing arrest if they get caught. Offside is set during an actual match between Iran and Bahrain; a win will put Iran in the 2006 World Cup. High up in the stadium, a small group of girls, dressed in various types of disguises, have been captured and are cordoned off, guarded closely by some soldiers who would rather be watching the match themselves or back home tending to their sheep. The girls, who can hear the crowd noise, beg for one of the men to narrate the game for them. Meanwhile, an old man is desperately trying to find his daughter to save her from some very real punishment that her brothers would dish out to her for shaming them by trying to get into the stadium. Despite its timely and poignant subject matter, Offside is a very funny film, with fine performances by Sima Mobarak Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ida Sadeghi, Golnaz Farmani, Mahnaz Zabihi, and Nazanin Sedighzadeh as the girls and M. Kheymeh Kabood as one of the soldiers.
