"Tropical Malady" is the only Apichatpong movie I've seen - and it was my favorite film from last year! So, the highest number of stars from me on this one, and I also own the DVD (the Thai DVD, not the crappy US one).
Speaking of the crappy US DVD... sigh ...I hesitate to say this because I know steering people away from it will mean steering a good many people away from seeing this film altogether. The biggest problem is that the original 5.1 track was inexplicably downgraded to 2.0 for the R1 release. This is particularly unfortunate given the extraordinary lengths the filmmakers went to in order to get an incredibly immersive, disorienting, thrilling surround mix of the Thai jungle for the second half of the story... all of which is almost totally lost in the crappy, mushy 2.0 track on the R1 disc.
However, if you can play PAL format discs from all regions, you can purchase that disc from Ethaicd.com for only $10.50 shipped to anywhere in the world. I believe that's less expensive than the R1 disc. The Thai DVD is anamorphic and includes that wonderfully designed 5.1 soundtrack and very good English subtitles. It also has a unique slim case with raised lettering on the cover. It's the second disc I've ordered from ethaicd.com, both of which arrived to Boston in less than a week after ordering. I must say, I sorta like getting the Thai DVD of a Thai film and I
really like those gorgeously inked Thai stamps that can be easily peeled off the package and stickered on the inside of the DVD case. Here's the link:
http://www.ethaicd.com/show.php?asso=1895&pid=16373
And a few reviews of the film (yes, I feel a bit evangelistic when it comes to "Tropical Malady":
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/052...,65385,20.html;
http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Stor...429582,00.html
Quote:
| There is a sort of film - a rare sort - that has you leaving the cinema in a light-headed daze, pointing back at the exit and asking the person you're with: "What just happened in there?" Such a one is this beautiful and strange Thai movie from director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose last film Blissfully Yours, about a Burmese immigrant and his Thai girlfriend was a little more conventional. Certainly it couldn't prepare us for the demi-fantasy mescaline headtrip that is Tropical Malady. Just thinking about it now makes me want to burst out laughing at its sheer audacity, its eccentricity, its unashamed aspiration to poetry and its nimble evasion of anything so commonplace as an explanation. * * * * * I thought then, and think now, that it's the most daring movie around: a film that deserves to be thronged with open-minded cinema-lovers on the lookout for something that doesn't just shuffle the same old dog-eared pack of cliches. |
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