Ramaswamy Balakrishnan

When one’s spirit is childlike and doesn’t seek to exploit Nature because there is no insecurity, or fear, or distrust, when one’s innocence is untainted by man-made knowledge and rules of violence, war, oppression, hatred and jealously, when one’s heart is full of love and opens up to the abundant beauty and infinite magic of the Universe why would not life be an enchanting, dreamy, fantasy where protective spirits hover around to comfort and nurture and heal the child. Uncle Boonmee’s childlike nature perhaps enabled him to recall his past lives and he saw that he was always loved and protected. He was, in one life, a frightened lost bull but his master came to look for him, and lovingly tugged him back home. He saw himself as an unloved, ugly princess and yet a catfish finds the princess graceful and makes love to her and she turns into a catfish herself discarding the suffocating burden of her jewellery. When he falls sick with a kidney ailment his wife returns as a ghost to take care of him and the other animal spirits of his farm quietly pay their respects as they sense that he is about to pass away and move on to another life. He remembers that he was first born in a cave of glittering rocks when life emerged from the ashes of stardust. He knows not whether he was born a man or woman or as an animal. Finally, when the broken body becomes too much of a burden to his spirit his wife gently and compassionately releases the spirit away into freedom. Perhaps it was just a dream Uncle Boonmee had just before he died, but his dreams were of the moments of love and compassion with which Nature always embraced him. But in this fantastic dream lies the quintessential question that leads perhaps to enlightenment – why do we seem to only recall moments of fear and insecurity and scarcity and hatred and then live our lives mechanically holding on to rigid rules of man-made divisions of nationality, gender, race, colour seeking to find security for our limited conception of our spirits and life through violence, and war, and oppression even at the expense of all others. Why do we seem to be disenchanted with life and seek to escape this boredom when all we have to do is to open our eyes, hearts and lives to the magical fantasy we really live in. And as if to capture the point that this fantasy is indeed real, the camera weaves pictures and sounds of the beauty and the depth of Nature and of all the life in it, even momentarily transporting us to a timeless enchanting space where we forget the dreariness of our limited conceptions. It’s not a fantasy movie, but a fantastic one!