2004 ‘สัตว์ประหลาด’ Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
The passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.
Charles de Meaux Christoph Thoke Pantham Thongsangl Axel Möbius Paiboon Damrongchaitham Marco Mueller
Lee Chatametikool Narathip Tungkaseranee Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr Teekadet Vucharadhanin Jasmin Vorabutr Thitipant Chongcharoen-choke-skul
Sud pralad, 열대병, Tropical Malady - Liebe kennt nur den Moment..., Тропическа епидемия, Тропічна хвороба, Sud Pralad, 热带疾病, Тропическая болезнь, Febre Tropical, Mal dos Trópicos, Choroba tropikalna, Τροπική Ασθένεια, トロピカル・マラディ
France
Cannes Film Festival
Belgium
Brussels Cinédécouvertes Film Festival
Thailand
Italy
Greece
Belgium
France
Greece
Italy
Thailand
"When I gave you the Clash tape,
I forgot to give you my heart.
You can have it today."
Every time I watch this film, it leaves me absolutely speechless. The final fifteen minutes or so are probably the closest thing to a spiritual experience that I have ever had with a movie. I've already had to wait a half an hour to begin writing this review, so I'm going to keep it simple:
Tropical Malady is a meditation on human nature - as most great films are - violence, and sexuality (our animalistic impulses). Apichatpong Weerasethakul excelled quite a bit as a filmmaker since his previous film, Blissfully Yours (another absolutely amazing movie, and probably my second favorite of…
This film makes explicit the animal nature of sex and love. It suggests that love is as primal, natural, and savage a force as even our most violent urges, and captures these ideas in a blending of modern light romance and fantastical folk tales. It compares new love to a fevered hunt, and it suggests that the emotional devotion of commitment is equal to the acceptance of violent death. It feels both romantic and brutally not. Love is the titular malady, it seems.
This metaphor is conveyed in two distinct halves, one a slow, languid romance between a soldier and a young farmer. Their love affair is sweet and sensual, taking place quietly as they entwine their bodies in awkward…
85/100
[Reviewed from NYFF '04.]
Opinion seems divided about whether this exquisitely uncanny gay romance tells one linear, simple-yet-oblique story, switching rhetorical gears at the midpoint, or whether its mythic second half to some extent recapitulates its mundane first. Both positions have merit—though I found a number of apparent rhymes on second viewing supporting the latter—but more compelling than either, to my mind, is the film's implicit suggestion that no amount of artful, naturalistic observation can possibly convey the atavistic turmoil lurking within the human heart. Unexpected though the rupture may be, it arrives precisely at the moment when conventional representation, however inventive, precise and assured, starts to feel painfully inadequate. The jungle adventure that follows—beautiful, mysterious, savage, tentative, spontaneous, unforgettable—deserves a less hackneyed and misleading phrase than "pure cinema," but somebody else will have to come up with the neologism. I'm already a week behind.
"The tiger trails you like a shadow. His spirit is starving and lonesome. I see you are his prey and his companion. He can smell you from mountains away. And soon you will feel the same. Kill him to free him from the ghost world or let him devour you and enter his world."
"A creature whose life exists only by memories of others."
"And now I see myself. My mother, my father; fear, sadness. It was all so real, so real that they brought me to life."
will never have the words to describe what this means. the final minutes of this movie hit me as hard as Mirror did 3 years ago, reflecting the anxieties and struggles I was dealing with so perfectly in a way that I could achieve catharsis, that I could cry without desperation or hatred stemming from the tears, that I could hope for a world where the fantastical brings me peace too. anyone who knows me personally knows that my girlfriend’s been in hospital with COVID-19 for almost three months, in that time, I’ve wanted to crawl through the endless abyss to be with her, to force myself through hell in order to embrace her in my arms. yet I can’t…
this is like if you were watching a tsai ming-liang film and then suddenly halfway through it turned into an even more queer version of predator; absolutely bonkers and audacious filmmaking, the artform at its most free. weerasethakul paints a huge shamanistic landscape which not only includes the characters, story and environment, but also you, the viewer, are invited to participate in the magick circle of meaning, as if the film was a primordial campfire tale told to modern people, a tale which reinvigorates and clarifies feelings thought long lost or completely suppressed. reminded me so much of beau travail in its depiction of aggressive homosocial desire -- if man cannot love a man while remaining a man, he must become a beast.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is not an easy filmmaker to pin down from the moment you watch any of his films for the first time. But even when you want to revisit a work like Tropical Malady, it never feels easy to directly point towards everything that makes such a film so beautiful - and for many reasons it not only sticks with me as his best film as a director but one of the most beautiful queer films ever to have been made. In the film’s moments of seemingly simple beauty, you find yourself engulfed as part of another fantasy. It’s not something that I say lightly when I wish to describe the many wonders of such a film, but it…
The most maturely crafted film --
both structurally and thematically --
& interpersonally introspective work
of the twenty-first century, thus far:
the way that homosexual couples
are abused by their environment,
treated like literal animals by some...
and the way that this lack of acceptance,
and looming anxiety, sometimes leads to
separations and relationship deterioration
both inside & outside the queer community.
Men are wild beasts and we seek to control our nature. Tropical Malady makes two stories out of its simple concept. The first is a romance and the second a fantasy, yet there exists a duality. They mirror, both centring on a soldier and another man, destined to be consumed into something greater. Whether the love of the first part is a metaphor for the hunt in the second, or the hunt is a metaphor for love, is unclear. There isn't an obvious meaning, just two parts that interlock.
Tropical Malady doesn't follow any rules of cinema. Its edits are abrupt and harsh, telling a story that is incomplete and completely fractured. All these scenes are hard to link together.…
Isn't this how love is supposed to be? It starts out with the exchange of mixtapes, which then goes on to the hands holding before ending up with the cuddling. But gradually, you learn to give in to your primal instinct. You bare your soul and offer your whole being, mind, body, flesh and spirit, to the other person, who just happens to be a nocturnal beast in the woods, knowing you won't come out of it alive. And between reality and fantasy, or the romantic daydream and the nightmare, I would always choose the latter.
This film has the greatest ending of any movie that I've ever seen.
The last twenty minutes are as close to magical as you can get.
