reflecting the time

thai film ‘uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives’ won the top prize palme d’or at cannes today. it is a story about a dying man who engages in a conversation with an apparition of his late wife and his son who has reappeared in the form of a red-eyed monkey. i am sure it’s a pretty good movie. but i am also pretty sure there are more factors at work putting it over the top.

coco chanel once said: ‘i set the fashion for a quater of a century. why? because i knew how to express my own time’. the reverse is also valid. i am convince that the raise in the popularity of the korean movies, soap operas, and celebraties had more to do with north korea than people think – the whole (still ongoing) nukes episode had forced not just the north, but also the south korean onto the world consciousness.

writer/director apichatpong weerasethakul should have thanked the ‘red shirt’ demonstrators and his (idiotic) prime minister in his acceptance speech for making all these possible for him.

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