Phase Change: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendour

Cemetery of Splendour – famed Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's last work to be shot in his homeland – is replete with themes such as reincarnation, nascent romance, psychical connections and the past bleeding into the present. Beyond the surface, however, this film's slowly unfolding, somnolent narrative leverages its cinematic allure to suggest the need to awaken from political inertia, writes James Robert Douglas.

Additional keywords: Khon Kaen, Thailand, Asian cinema, ghosts, Buddhism, psychic recurrence.