An insomniac lies in bed as theatrical backdrops unveil themselves and her sheet catches aflame.
EN
“Cut to an idealised painted scene, Thailand, its lush beauty, karsts, a sun that threatens to outgrow the sky. Squeaking as the backdrop is rolled up to reveal a different scene. The woman is now awake, her body audibly sounding the blanket fibres as she clasps her hands. Squeaking again, as the first scene is lowered. Then footsteps and a flame which seems to cause restlessness in the sleeper. A dream with all the ambiguity that fire suggests. She turns over, the flame grows, audible and visible as a fire which seems to have caught the fabric of her blanket. More dogs bark, provoking and answering each other as dogs do. Under the sound of fire and night voices, another sound manifests, a subliminal unpitched turbulence, perhaps the fire, perhaps not. Cut to a garden scene, its canvas gently moving in the air, then squeaking as the first scene is unrolled again to cover it. The fire grows, burning into, or out of the woman's heart. She is awake now but still. Her eyes open and close, as if she is woken by dream, restless. Now we see the frame on which the painted backdrops are suspended. The fire seems to have spread to the corner of one of these backdrops, no more or less illusory in its scenery than the real plants that wave gently in a breeze. The woman is alight now, a funeral pyre. The sea is alight; so is the sun. The fire seems to be speaking, inarticulate speech. As the credits run on black, we hear night, fire, squeaking, unpitched turbulence.
[...]
Asked about his use of sound, Apichatpong has this to say: ‘I want it to resonate in the heart.’ Does it resonate in the world? ‘What's that sound?’ Apichatpong’s films suggest many answers to this recurring question, or no answers at all, only openings. Loud bang in sleep, subliminal roar, deep groaning voices of howler monkeys; all inchoate, the invisible entity that stalks us through life. Sound is here on earth with us, calling to another place, beyond physical life.”
David Toop1
- 1David Toop, “Apichatpong Weerasethakul: The Unknown Sound,” Sabzian, 27 April 2022.