0 Tropical Malady (2004)

Sud pralad, Thailand / France / Germany / Italy, 118 minutes
Director/writer: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Photography: Jarin Pengpanitch, Vichit Tanapanitch, Jean-Louis Vialard
Music: Smallroom
Editors: Lee Chatametikool, Jacopo Quadri
Cast: Banlop Lomnoi, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Huai Dessom, Sirivech Jareonchon, Udom Promma

Tropical Malady yokes two unrelated stories into coequal halves so formally that it almost feels like an anthology. The second story even gets what appears to be a title ("A Spirit's Path"). Yet there are mysterious affinities between the two halves. Both involve soldiers and share the two acting leads (who look very different across the stories), both revolve around investigations by the military of unexplained deaths of villagers and livestock. Director and writer Apichatpong Weerasethakul is notably a comer on the list of 21st-century films at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, splitting votes by the evidence, with Tropical Malady presently at #12 and, behind it, Blissfully Yours at #15, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives at #36, and Syndromes and a Century at #45.

Weerasethakul is Thai and might as well be approached as something of an Asian David Lynch. It's an easy comparison. He's weird enough and his sources feel deep enough. Weerasethakul's fundamental preoccupation are with the spirit world, though his appreciation for the beauties of the carnal, physical plane are undeniable. If nothing else—and sometimes I think it's not much more—Tropical Malady is extraordinarily beautiful, capturing the luminous qualities of life and its visible surfaces: the glowing green of the jungle, the evocative faces of animals and humans, the way light plays in darkness. It is also glancingly good with the tender dances of falling in love, raising a family, working, being alive and human. You won't know what you saw, I can guarantee that much, but you might want to keep looking. Tropical Malady nags with an air of muted yet repellent fascination, like a person of inscrutable beauty used to being stared at. Think of it maybe as externalized meditation.



The translation for the original title, Sud pralad, is roughly "strange animal" and altogether that provides a better frame for what follows—I'm not sure I see a "malady" anywhere here—though the truth is it's hard to know how to prepare for seeing this movie. A headnote offers this: "All of us are by nature wild beasts. Our duty as human beings is to become like trainers who keep their animals in check, and even teach them to perform tasks alien to their bestiality."

In many ways it is a movie about bifurcations, or maybe "duality," pitting apparent opposites against one another, or setting them up in parallel, or sequence: humanity vs. primal nature, science / technology vs. magic, the family vs. the individual, life vs. death, the carnal vs. the spiritual. In the first half we follow a loosely constructed romance between a soldier (Banlop Lomnoi) whose unit is passing through a rural region and a country boy (Sakda Kaewbuadee) living there. They see one another around. The soldier gives the boy a tape of Clash songs. The boy wonders how he knew he liked the Clash. The soldier says he did his research. They meet a magical woman who tells them strange stories and takes them to unusual, dangerous places. She is probably a spirit. The wall between the earthly plane and the spirit world is infinitely penetrable in Tropical Malady.

Thailand in 2004 was no more enlightened than anyplace else, so the romance is necessarily clandestine, a secret, though happily it is early in the affair and shame is not yet much a part of it. At almost exactly the halfway point of the picture, it shifts to a story of a soldier (Lomnoi again, though from lighting and setup I did not easily recognize him). He is on an isolated mission in the jungle. The details of that mission are explained late and appear to be unimportant as he has made his mission hunting a shape-shifting tiger spirit (Kaewbuadee again, though even more unrecognizable), which in turn also happens to be hunting him.

It's the second half that wins Tropical Malady all its characterizations as "experimental" and "avant-garde." It is a marked break from the first half, mostly silent, with almost no dialogue, though now and then intertitles provide helpful (and confusing) information. The soldier carries a radio which fascinates the tiger spirit. Monkeys and ghosts of cows offer the soldier oblique information. A tree briefly takes on qualities of immortality, before settling back again into the soft nightscape, where crickets saw away. The soldier continually underestimates the power of the tiger spirit. Ultimately the soldier knows fear.

The most relevant question in all this is the usual WTF. Wikipedia tells stories of people streaming away from press screenings and those who stayed booing it at the end, and indeed, I have found myself growing impatient with it. It is opaque and slow to develop when it develops at all, which is not always. It's one you have to be in a mood for, and not helped by various evident problems in transfer to DVD (or not—hard to tell "mistakes" in this one).

Perhaps the most apt comparison to Lynch is Weerasethakul's use of pop music and dance music, which like everything else here is bewilderingly random, but sumptuous, breathtaking, and beautiful when it comes—sublime. I think this is also something that can redeem Harmony Korine projects, notably Mister Lonely. Pop music well placed can redeem almost anything for me, I confess. And so it is in Tropical Malady, which I can't exactly recommend but can certainly call your attention to.

Detail: Tropical Malady (2004)

0 Dwight Yoakam, "Mercury Blues" (2004)

(listen)

Dwight Yoakam has never yet quite somehow connected with me. Or had not anyway, until this steamy little cooker was called to my attention. Everything about him has always seemed slightly overdone to me. The big hat is just the most visible symptom. There is also the Hollywood career and the piercing operatics of his voice, neither of which, I suspect, would everyone be inclined to consider weaknesses on his part. The album is Dwight's Used Records, a covers project and general sopping-up exercise, gathering tracks from all manner of origins, tribute albums, one-off duets, stuff from the vault, etc. (More reason for misgivings about Yoakam are the projects that seem slightly gimmicky: dwightyoakamacoustic.net was the album before this I had tried.) But "Mercury Blues"—a standard written in 1949, with which Alan Jackson had the most success, in 1992—is done just right, everything about it, starting with choosing it to record. Others who've taken a crack include Steve Miller, David Lindley, and Meat Loaf (in 2003). I don't know the rest of Dwight's Used Records that well, except that it's presently kind of hard to find. But the more I sit here playing "Mercury Blues," the more I think I should maybe look into it. This song has got such a sharp, smoldering quality to it—the quasi-Hammond organ fills have a lot to do with that, working an uptempo boogie groove, but the whole band is excellent and Yoakam has never sounded better to me, welling in and up and around this mess, hitting all the right notes hard, and then stepping back to let the electric guitar player hit a few. Is that him? 'Cos that crazy sound is the most, man. It's slick, tight, and I wanna hear it again.

Detail: Dwight Yoakam, "Mercury Blues" (2004)

0 A Foreign Sound (2004)

It occurred to me for the first time recently, going back to this elusive and fascinating cover songs album by Caetano Veloso, the great Brazilian singer and songwriter, that the title could well have been plucked out of the compelling word salad of one of the bravest and most audacious covers here (of many), Bob Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)": "So don't fear if you hear / A foreign sound to your ear / It's alright, Ma," etc. At 22 tracks, this album is packed full, arms wide open, Walt Whitman style, I-am-large—I-contain-multitudes, with room for Fred Astaire, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Kurt Cobain, and Morris Alpert, which is the track order for the first five songs, so you know how fast it switches and what caps it reaches for: "The Carioca," "So in Love," "Always," "Come as You Are," and "Feelings." For every standard such as "Summertime" there's at least one mostly unexpected pick with an interesting history or twist: "Cry Me a River," which may or may not be associated with Barbra Streisand now but Julie London owned it first, "Nature Boy," a Nat King Cole song later covered by Big Star, "(Nothing But) Flowers," late Talking Heads, on and on it goes. In many ways it's a perfect freak show of references. But in case anyone was still wondering, Veloso proves over and over what a shrewd, insinuating, and overpowering performer he can be. As suggested by the songs already mentioned, there's a lot of extravagance in the choices, but after that it's strictly professional, with a variety of outfits assembled for the purposes of each song, some of which are just Veloso singing and playing guitar and others with big orchestras. But at the same time, from all these sessions, it also feels like an organic whole, more than arguably it has any right to. The bob and weave of these songs can be hypnotic, and there is much to be taken from close listening—the best touches are also the finest, sneaking up on you, often in Veloso's phrasings and scans. So many of these concept projects, such as tribute albums or a covers album such as this, often look better on paper but somehow don't translate, except the occasional inspired track. I admit I had my concerns seeing how wild A Foreign Sound can swing, from Nirvana to Elvis to DNA. It can go some pretty crazy places. But Veloso always seems to know where he is and what he is doing, so let it play, baby, I say let it play.

Detail: A Foreign Sound (2004)