Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

November 2 is All Souls' Day in the Christian calendar, and the closing day of Mexico's Day of the Dead — the season in which the living are permitted to bring the dead back to the table. Both of tonight's films do exactly that: one on a farm in northeast Thailand, one in Chile's Atacama Desert. Half a world apart, neither rushes to explain death; they simply let the dead sit down beside us again.

泰国东北伊善地区，芒果园旁的一栋农舍。布米叔叔的肾已经坏了，老挝籍助手 Jaai 每天为他做腹膜透析。嫂子 Jen 和侄子 Tong 从城里回来，陪他度过这段日子。 晚饭时分，餐桌旁多了一位客人——他已故十多年的妻子。没过多久，失踪多年的儿子也回来了，只是他不再是人的样子。布米没有惊慌，也没有追问。他请他们坐下，添了碗筷。 这是一部关于告别的电影，却几乎不悲伤。它把最不可思议的事，拍得像一件家常事。

At Cannes in 2010 it won the Palme d'Or — the first Thai film ever to take the prize, and the first Asian film to do so since 1997. Cahiers du Cinéma named it the best film of the year, and in the BBC's 2016 poll of critics on the greatest films of the 21st century it placed 37th. Apichatpong divides the film into six reels, each in a different texture: the stiff performance style of old Thai cinema, observational documentary, a period-costume passage, and his signature long takes. It was shot on 16mm — partly for budget, partly to give the image the grain of classic Thai film. It is gentle, but not light. It is about how memory peels away in layers, and how a man learns to live alongside what he has done.