Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Starring Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee PG cert, IFI/ Light House, Dublin, 114 mins

This puzzling, unclassifiable, award-winning fantasy from Thailand might be about heaven, hell and all points in-between, writes Tara Brady

UNCLE BOONMEE is dying. We know so because we’ve watched him struggling through dialysis and because his late wife Huay has, rather ominously, turned up for dinner. Their family reunion is made complete when their son, who went missing many years before, turns up in monkey ghost form. “There are many spirits gathering outside,” he tells the old man.

Boonmee uses the occasion to ponder his past lives and what he may have done to deserve his illness. Might he now be atoning for time spent as a talking catfish, when he had that thing with a disfigured princess? And will a trek across the jungle to the cave where he was born shed any light on the matter?

It is a tribute to the directing chops of Apichatpong Weerasethaku ( Tropical Malady) that we watch this strange, mesmerising Thai picture without batting an eye at its baffling progression. Freely based on a real person (the subject of a religious text written by a monk in Apichatpong's hometown), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Livesexudes such an eerie, hypnotic calm that the viewer is rendered insensible to the improbability of a buffalo having red lasers for eyes.

In keeping with the film’s Buddhist origins, there is no sense of desperation in Boonmee’s quest, only inquisitiveness and acceptance. Languid pacing and poetically presented, medium-range tableaux extend this Zen quality into every frame.

The sense of quiet religious devotion should please fans of Into Great Silenceor Lourdes, but this surreal 2010 Palme D'Or winner is equally likely to appeal to David Lynch diehards. Apichatpong punctuates naturalistic longeurs with guffawing absurdities and plain hilarity. One minute it's people watching telly in real time; the next, it's a monkey ghost's holiday snapshots from a military installation.

The monkey ghost’s vacation may, of course, have a greater significance for the film’s native Thai audience. The film is set against the lush, folkloric tropics around Isan in the northeast and, just in case we don’t catch the relevance of the geographical specificity, the script makes allusion to that locale’s history of brutal crackdowns on Communist sympathisers and the continuing displacement of peoples from Cambodia and Laos. “I’ve killed too many Communists,” Boonmee admits sorrowfully as he considers the karmic factors underlying his renal failure.

Even these pointed political references amount to mere footnotes in the grander scheme. Uncle Boonmeeis too otherworldly and peaceable to get overly heated about earthly concerns. Using a grainy 16mm stock and kitchen- sink observation, the writer- director puts realist tropes in the service of beatific detachment.

The viewer is consistently placed at a floating, pacifying distance. Sensations, like rain played at tin- roof volume, hover and amplify.

We can’t say what it all means – that karaoke epilogue, anyone? – but we do know that it’s a big film with generous and humorous things to say about such weighty matters as mortality. If it plays like an out-of-body experience, it’s because Apichatpong has expanded the canvas to fit the material.

It’s about nothing; it’s about everything. It’s sublime; it’s ridiculous. It’s something to see.