Worldly Desires
Description
This digital featurette, not quite a companion piece to Tropical Malady but certainly related to it, shows Joe operating at the height of his formalist powers. One of the things I’ve valued about Weerasethakul’s work since Mysterious Object at Noon is his commitment to exploring the traditions of avant-garde cinema while taking those idioms into uncharted territory. While some works by Joe have displayed an interest in bending the strategies of Andy Warhol and Bruce Baillie to the needs of Thai folklore and narrative gamesmanship, Worldly Desires takes a more structural approach. However this piece bears little resemblance to structural film as we usually think of it; if there are specific touchstones for Worldly Desires in film history, they would be those “other” structuralists, so wonky and off the beaten track as to thwart easy categorization. Like Morgan Fisher’s early film projects, Worldly Desires is a documentation of the filmmaking process. Within a single expansive jungle location, portions of a Thai soap opera are being filmed by day, and a music video is being made by night.We watch at a significant remove, behind the camera and lighting crews. Multiple views display random bits of business on the periphery, like the craft services table or a playback monitor. However, the stringent day / night rhythmic structure breaks down in the end, the night song (about a woman wondering if she’ll be as lucky in love as her mom was — an Electra Complex with a disco beat) eventually bleeding into the daytime shoot. But more significantly, the relatively austere TV production, whose melodramatic dialogue is mostly heard in disconnected snippets, is contrapuntally offset by the swelling musical numbers. They break up the video, with the unexpected jolt of pure pleasure. Although these sequences recall the musical interludes in certain of Tsai Ming-liang’s films, they’re shot in the mode of early Hou Hsiao-hsien, dancing girls reduced to tiny figures in a wide expanse, itself engulfed within an intractable master-shot. The rigor / comedy handoff recalls aspects of Owen Land’s work, but perhaps more importantly, Joe’s visual and conceptual approach displays a sensitivity to the unique qualities of the jungle landscape, a willingness to let the “location” become the subject of the piece. Worldly Desires is a landscape film, one that brings that most mythologically burdened aspect of Tropical Malady — its deep, dark thicket of the soul — and allows it to grow wild and overtake the image.
Country: Thailand
Status: Completed
Released: 2005
Genre: Drama;
- Ads
- Coming Eps
- Ongoing
Ads
Coming Episode
-
My Sibling's Romance (2024) Episode 14
About 1 day -
Bitter Sweet Hell (2024) Episode 3
About 2 days -
Bitter Sweet Hell (2024) Episode 4
About 2 days -
Connection (2024) Episode 3
About 2 days -
Connection (2024) Episode 4
About 2 days -
The Atypical Family (2024) Episode 9
About 2 days -
Running Man (2010) Episode 708
About 3 days -
Missing Crown Prince (2024) Episode 15
About 3 days -
Missing Crown Prince (2024) Episode 16
About 3 days -
The Atypical Family (2024) Episode 10
About 3 days -
The Midnight Romance in Hagwon (2024) Episode 7
About 3 days -
The Midnight Romance in Hagwon (2024) Episode 8
About 3 days -
Beauty and Mr. Romantic (2024) Episode 21
About 3 days -
Beauty and Mr. Romantic (2024) Episode 22
About 3 days -
OMG! Vampire (2024) Episode 3
About 4 days -
Kimi to Yukite Saku: Shinsengumi Seishunroku (2024) Episode 4
About 5 days -
Secret Ingredient (2024) Episode 6
About 5 days -
Dare to Love Me (2024) Episode 7
About 6 days -
Dare to Love Me (2024) Episode 8
About 6 days -
Crash (2024) Episode 7
About 6 days -
Crash (2024) Episode 8
About 6 days -
Whenever Possible (2024) Episode 7
About 6 days -
The Brave Yong Soo Jung (2024) Episode 19
About 6 days -
In Cold Blood (2024) Episode 93
About 6 days -
Soo Ji & Woo Ri (2024) Episode 48
About 6 days -
Frankly Speaking (2024) Episode 10
About 6 days -
We Are (2024) Episode 10
About 6 days
Popular Ongoing
-
Hierarchy (2024)
-
Wonderland (2024)
-
Dreaming of a Freaking Fairytale (2024)
-
Bitter Sweet Hell (2024)
-
Uncle Samsik (2024)
-
Crash (2024)
-
The Midnight Romance in Hagwon (2024)
-
The Player 2: Master of Swindlers (2024)
-
Connection (2024)
-
Dare to Love Me (2024)
-
The Atypical Family (2024)
-
Girls High School Mystery Class Season 3 (2024)
-
Missing Crown Prince (2024)
-
Miss Night and Day (2024)
-
Following (2024)
-
Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red-Moon Pact (2024)
-
The Last Cook (2024)
-
My Sweet Mobster (2024)
-
Beauty and Mr. Romantic (2024)
-
Frankly Speaking (2024)
-
The Brave Yong Soo Jung (2024)
-
Love Sea (2024)
-
Haunted Universities Three (2024)
-
Kissed by the Rain (2024)
-
SunsetxVibes: Uncut Version (2024)
-
The Brave Man (2024)
-
A Love So Beautiful (2024)
-
Only Boo! (2024)
-
Dhevaprom: Jaipisut (2024)
-
Law-less (2024)
-
My Marvellous Dream Is You (2024)
-
Wandee Goodday (2024)
-
Bangkok Blossom (2024)
-
Memory in the Letter (2024)
-
We Are (2024)
-
Songkhram Somrot (2024)