Commissioned as part of the New Crowned Hope project to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century is both very similar and very different from his previous feature, the greatly acclaimed Tropical Malady. While it shares a split structure with Tropical Malady, to say nothing of his normal gorgeous shooting style and touches of light, observational humor Syndromes is entirely a more abstract piece, built around fragments of memory and mood with only the slightest of narrative threads moving through the piece. While Malady used two very divergent, very narrative oriented stories to explore and expand a theme Syndromes uses its split to show how much things stay the same, no matter how much they change.
Split into halves devoted to childhood memories of his doctor parents, here fictionalized and imagined as they might have been before they got together, Syndromes explores two very different hospital settings and those who work within, with several key sequences repeated in both halves. The opening sequence revolves around his mother figure, Toey, plying her trade in a rural setting much like the one the director himself grew up in, while the second sequence places his father figure, Nohng, in a very contemporary Bangkok the environment the director currently lives in.
Syndromes and a Century is a film that is both virtually impossible and quite pointless to synopsize. This is a film that is nothing but grace notes, nothing but little fragmentary memories and scenarios linked together to evoke a mood, to paint a general picture rather than telling any particular story. It is a film concerned with the quirks that make humanity so endlessly fascinating, a film that demonstrates that while the settings may change the basic elements that make us tick never really do.
Set as it is in an environment representing the director’s own childhood the opening half of the film captures a dreamy tone, following that odd almost-logic of dreams, stories blending and blurring, the imagery striking, the soundtrack rich and ambient. While it revolves around Toey this segment also features a host of memorable characters: the singing dentist, the guitar playing monk who secretly yearns to be a deejay, the orchid farmer, and, in a part more funny for being so very true and recognizable, the young man hopelessly in love with Toey, utterly clueless as to what to do about it, and completely, one hundred percent terrified of her.
The second half of the film opens with a sequence that so closely mirrors the opening of the first half that it takes a moment to realize that the setting has shifted entirely, to a clean, clinical, modern hospital in Bangkok. We are now following the father figure in the bustle of the modern world and while the dream like qualities are less apparent in this segment it isn’t long before Weerasethakul is able to find the magical even in the busyness of urban life. And again, the grace notes are everywhere: the bored hospitalized youth playing tennis in the hospital hallway, the attempt at chakra healing, the prosthetic limb technician who keeps a bottle hidden in the thigh of a false leg.
Make no mistake about it, Syndromes and a Century is purely an arthouse film with no concessions made to mainstream sensibilities but it is also a film that demonstrates once again that Weerasethakul is one of the world’s most distinctive and talented voices, gifted with a light and playful touch, an incredible eye, and a true gift for observation. What this all has to do with Mozart I have no idea, but anything that provides an excuse for Weerasethakul to get behind the camera is a good thing.