The idea of bliss is practically synonymous with ignorance in any culture deploring of selfishness; because if you’re blissful, is there any way to actively be altruistic or even productive? In other words, is there anything about being happy that makes us better people? I know it’s a very film-buffish thing to do to bitch about people calling you selfish, by obsessing over the need to look at flickering images all the time, but Apichatpong Weerasethakul knows this, and his Blissfully Yours works both as cinematic allegory and political parable.

It concerns a Burmese immigrant named Min, who needs to get treated for a rash, and to get away from his troubles embarks on an afternoon replete with pink cream (we are shown the production of this, taking a step further into honesty about how an objects physical circumstances affect the context it’s used in), pepsi (rejoicing in globalized culture), pop music (that surges along with the opening credits at the half-way mark, just as everybody’s prepared to lay back), and penis action with his capitalist-bound gal pal, Roong. There is also an older woman, Orn, who seems to assume the position of caretaker and adventurer, if not direct companion, and has a doomed stalker of her own. The fates and arcs of these characters are not the same, but they are all falling onto the crutch of the Other to reaffirm their wavering happiness, just as we fall upon Weerasethakul to seduce us with new environments, new things, new people, new music. This is a movie about the experience of watching it, about whether our physical status can allow us to achieve the intellectual breeziness of the somewhat ignorant-of-their-own-socioeconomic-conditioning characters at hand.

As the three become adjusted to the forest, their attitudes are similar, reflecting an intimately communicative passiveness (Orn fucks like a machine low on fuel; Roong spews love cliches out as if to double back upon their self-satirical possibilities; Min is for the most part glad to be taken care of; and what makes them all the same is their need to continue), and the meeting in the lake is a transcendent moment of participation, where the sadness of Orn’s middle-age lament and happiness of Roong’s spawning, imitative maturity collide on the sores of Min’s back.

But everything must end removed, as everyone here is heading towards their own eternity: Orn, laying there, too tired to cry, too alone to be happy; the food, terrorized by bugs, then thrown into the lake; Min, reflecting on the value of his happy, semi-educational experiences even as he knows he’ll be forced into a new life soon; and Roong, staring up into space forever, attacked and serenaded by the singularity of her encounters with beauty. After a picnic, a murder, and a handjob, where do we go? The answer lies within where we are. Blissfully Yours ultimately implies that we may better understand each other by getting in touch with our own relationship with the physical conditions we’re surrounded by, and mutually fall into their specific limitations and evocations.

3.9.03

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