Among the most vivid cinematic visions, those that linger most enduringly for me, is the image of the sleeper on fire in Blue.

I speak of a vision, because the sleeper isn’t literally burning. This image deconstructs itself as the film progresses. It’s the reflection of a fire on a glass panel that creates this mesmerizing superimposition.

Yet, the enchantment of this vision endures. Is it because of the transitory space between the wakefulness and the slumber of the sleeper, where the flame, like a metaphor for creativity, reaches its peak—a blazing inferno? There is undoubtedly something to this, thanks to the mirroring effect of the staging: after all, it is the viewer who witnesses this slow and gradual blaze, drawn into a reverie worthy of Bachelard.

But this reverie is episodically (and comically) interrupted by the squeaking of backdrops that roll up and down. These patched-up backgrounds of temples and sunlit valleys belong to Likay, a form of popular Thai theater. In tune with Blue, these traveling shows rely on rudimentary scenery and largely improvised stories that heavily engage the imagination of the audience. To any Apichatpong fan, one recognizes here his admirable ability to avoid falling into an impenetrable Orientalism while managing to evoke elements of his culture. This undoubtedly contributes to the international acclaim his work has achieved.

Let us conclude on this note: fire fascinates as it can burn—this vision of the woman sleeping may be understood as a contemporary subject, and the Promethean fire as her burnout. Apichatpong’s cinema acts as a pharmakon, a Greek term whose medical sense designates both poison and cure. Speaking of medicine is fitting for Apichatpong, the son of doctors, whose work is filled with hospitals, illness, and death. Through this dialectic of fire, Blue proposes something nothing less than revolutionary: learning, through cinema's cure, to dissolve oneself into the elements (night, fire). To acclimate to these unproductive times and spaces, far removed from the primary effects of divided attention.

Let yourself be set ablaze.

Emmanuel Bernier
Head of Acquisitions at Tënk
and loony bird