Synopsis
In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Jenjira PongpasJen
- Banlop LomnoiItt
- Jarinpattra RueangramKeng
- Petcharat ChaiburiNurse Tet
- Tawatchai BuawatMeditation Instructor
- Sujittraporn WongsrikeawGoddess #1
- Bhattaratorn SenkraigulGoddess #2
- Sakda KaewbuadeeTong
- Pongsadhorn LertsukonLibrary Director
- Sasipim PiwanseneeCream Hostess
Recommendations
- 100
The Playlist
It is so lived-in and authentic in its real-world detail, and so enigmatic and mysterious in its diversions and sidelong glances, that it's difficult not to see it as overridingly personal, not just to the director but to the viewer. It's a true act of the most optimistic communication and communion. - 100
Slant Magazine
It gently and often imperceptibly shifts between past and present, legend and modernity, wakefulness and reverie. - 90
Variety
While Cemetery of Splendor is unabashedly a work of slow cinema, the oft-hurled pejorative of “difficult” seems a particularly poor fit for a film whose unforced lyricism could scarcely be more graceful or inviting. - 83
The Film Stage
[Joe's] latest film is as enveloping as anything he’s ever made: a work that’s as darkly comic on subjects as specific as hospital regulation as it is sober-minded about perils as universal as comfortable living, one open to the possibilities of spiritual awakening while confronting us with questions of belief. - 80
The Guardian
It is such a strange film in its way, stranger still if you are not accustomed to Weerasethakul’s work, and it needs a real investment of attention. But there is something sublime in it. - 80
Screen Daily
Maintaining his fondness for long, contemplative shots, Weerasethakul creates a deceptively serene sense of storytelling, with gentle grace notes of wry humour. - 80
The Telegraph
This is the same wondrous journey on which Apichatpong sends his audience: inwards and downwards, to a place where the simplest rhythms of everyday life become hallowed and mythic. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
Past lives and ancient ancestors are evoked through conversations that are both cryptic and oddly matter-of-fact, in a work that has the realistic vibe of a documentary but the unearthly qualities of a sustained reverie.
