How to Shoot a Ghost (short), on Criterion Channel

There are scary ghosts like The Changeling and The Haunting, funny ghosts like Topper and Blythe Spirit, and sad, regretful ghosts like Casy Affleck in A Ghost Story. These two ghosts are definitely the latter. You could almost call them depressing, but they deserve a little slack, since they are newly dead. Sadly, their lives did not work out as they hoped. Spending their afterlives in a strange city also seems like a tough break, but they find some kind of companionship with each other in Charlie Kaufman’s short film How to Shoot a Ghost, which premieres Sunday on Criterion Channel.

He is a translator and she is a photographer, but both were profoundly unhappy. (According to the closing credits, they are Anthi and Rateb, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to their monologues). It seems vaguely implied they both also self-medicated through the hedonistic Athens nightlife, which may have in some ways led to their demise. They were expats largely unfamiliar with the city, but now they are evidently stuck there. Apparently, ghosts can’t travel.

Rather logically, the ancient city has many ghosts (whose pictures Anthi constantly snaps—call it ghost photography), but you’d want to give a lot of them a wide berth. Maybe those are the one screenwriter Eva H.D.’s anti-American narration blames on “CIA torture chambers.” In contrast, she expresses no such sympathy for those assassinated by Communist paramilitaries, like journalist Nicholas Gage’s mother Eleni Gatzoyiannis (as documented in the film Eleni).

Maybe Kaufman’s short should have talked less, because Ella van der Woude’s score is quite expressive, especially the eloquent tenor, alto, and bass clarinet solos contributed by Hristo Goleminov. Jesse Buckley and Josef Akiki voiceovers for the photographer and the translator are appropriate meditative and mournful, as well. The disembodied rendering of their voices is initially distracting and distancing, but it is also admittedly quite ghostly.

A.W. A Portrait of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, on the Criterion Channel

The tentatively titled Memoria will be Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s first film shot outside Thailand, but the rain forests of Colombia do not look so very different from the settings of his previous films, particularly Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall Past Lives. Weerasethakul openly wonders if he might lose his mojo in a foreign land, but he is convinced he needs the challenge of working outside his comfort zone. He is on a long location-scouting trip, but he has the company of actor-turned-filmmaker Connor Jesssup, who gives the auteur a casual documentary treatment befitting his impressionistic style in A. W. A Portrait of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, which premieres tomorrow on the Criterion Channel (on Filmstruck).

Weerasethakul adopted the sensible nickname of “Joe” for expediency’s sake, but Weerasethakul still makes us thankful for the copy-and-paste function. He is one of a growing number of internationally renown filmmakers who is more widely watched abroad than in his native country, but Thai movie buffs really ought to give Cemetery of Splendor a try, because it his best work yet.

Jessup, best known as an actor in Falling Skies is a passionate admirer of Weerasethakul’s aesthetic, so he set out to profile his role model, but his subject often turns the camera back on him, because that is what natural-born filmmakers do. It is fitting though, because the short doc has a languid rhythm and intimate vibe very similar to Weerasethakul’s films. Jessup bows to convention by incorporating a number of clips from his subject’s film, including the Palme D’Or-winning Boonmee and Cemetery. However, even ardent fans might not recognize the extracts from the prolific Weerasethakul’s experimental shorts and art installation films, because it is hard to keep up with that kind of work.

If you dig Weerasethakul than you will be charmed by A.W., whereas those who are unfamiliar or standoffish towards his films might start to glean some appreciation from Jessup’s Portrait. The relatively economical running time of forty-seven minutes is also a point in its favor. It is nice to have this film for those who will be studying Weerasethakul in the future (as they surely will be), but it will not eclipse Corman’s World or the weirdly under-screened Rohmer in Paris on the honor roll of compulsively watchable documentaries about film directors. Recommended for Joe Weerasethakul fans, A. W. A Portrait of Apichatpong Weerasethakul starts streaming tomorrow (3/19) on the Criterion Channel/Filmstruck.