Apichatpong Weerasethakul′s new film is just what you′d expect. Apichatpong continues to take further rhetoric and character. They are evident in such elements ass the Isan province of Thailand, the forest, the ghost, the soldier, the hospital built on the old school, the fluorescent light, the ambience without music, the coldly glowing billboards and screens, Keng who sees previous lives, and limping Zen. However, this time, he pushes the limit as the film crosses over the sleeping and waking moments, the fiction and the reality, and history and the politics. Forty soldiers from an excavation site fall into an endless sleep from an unknown plague and Zen volunteers to take care of them. Keng is a medium that claims that sleeping soldiers are summoned by the ancient king buried under the school building, and Zen communicates with Itt through him. This is a clear allegory for the chaotic and violent political situation in present day Thailand. Apichatpong tends to the personal and social scars in the film as Itt, possessed by Keng, heals Zen of her loneliness and pain. (CHO Hyeyoung)