"Cemetery of Splendour" crept out of 2015 with well-received reviews and awards above-average for a low-budget foreign film managing to get a limited release. And while its characters and originality were praised, its near-incomprehensible plot was noted by most reviews as belonging to an esoteric understanding outside of traditional film experiences.

Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the movie finds disjoint with modern Thailand’s society built over a cultural history that is at times buried right under the cement. Jenjira works at a hospital where several soldiers have been moved due to an incurable sleeping sickness which leaves them at all times in a bed next to a light that changes color and intended to be therapeutic. Jen (Jenjira) is one of the best characters in recent memory, almost at times making the movie seem like a documentary following this middle-aged woman who looks so natural in the movie’s environment it is easy to forget what is actually going on.

The movie’s pace is slow and dreamy, presented to subtly affect the psyche, much like "The Shining ," with the supernatural always threatening to burst through and at times it does in absurdist moments where Jen meets to goddesses while eating lunch. These jolts of oddity make up the humor in the film, where, a medium who speaks to the sleeping soldiers is also a secret agent and live cosmetic advertisements for skin cream occur in a park near the hospital.

And while at times the events that play out seem mundane, most the action is happening off-screen or is not visible to the audience. Jen, one leg shorter than the other, embodies what the movie is—a surrender to elements that cannot be understood, attempting to side-step disharmony in the world while seeking the cause of it. The way in which the movie plays with space that is not visible, whether it is an ancient palace replaced by a modern park (which she is led through by a spirit) or Jen’s emotional bond with one of the soldiers who communicates with her through dreams is its foundation. Just beyond the membrane of the space these characters inhabit are hints of darkness kept over from the past — Jen, walking through the park, passes near a hole in the wall filled with ceramic children and remarks that she had once hidden in a similar spot during a past conflict.

In the beginning of the movie, the medium character serves as the only bridge between the other world and the one that is familiar to us. But as the movie goes on and the alternate world where the sleeping soldiers are warriors for a king and gods war against each other is slowly revealed, reality is bent and the viewer becomes just as confused as Jen, who just like the soldiers struggling to stay awake, attempts to solve a “mystery” with no definite shape to be held onto.

The movie’s idea fluidity is felt at all times, seen in the way a character is able to temporarily swap gender or the movement between life and death through other worlds. The extras in the movie seem void of emotion, as though their world forgot the ancient one, and they are constantly waking from and falling back into a dream. People pose and walk around benches as if there are patterns regulating them in their dream-like, detached state—and when near the end, a climax is reached where it is implied that the sleeping soldiers act as a catalyst for the other world to bleed through, seen onscreen as ever-changing colors that illuminate public places like malls and bus stops, yet no one seems to notice.

And so at the end of the movie, Jen seems lost for answers, as does the viewer. She stares out into the hospital grounds, watching children play on uncovered mounds of dirt, which is felt to be disturbing. What is buried under the earth — is it the intangible and spiritual kingdom the soldiers are fighting for? Is the other world manipulating the dreams of this one or is it the other way around? And more importantly for Jen, which world is more real, the supernatural one she feels to be present with her emotions, or the very physical one where she feels to a degree to be trapped in her own body and has no answers.

Many western films might have the character the character of Jen be single-sided, focusing only on what her “visions” mean to her in a heavy-handed way, whereas "Cemetery of Splendour" is mostly subtle and esoteric. As often is the case with these sort of movies that play with reality perception, the audience is left to have their own experience. Many Apichatpong’s movies seem design to thwart Western expectations, with pacing that would be death in most film studios who also might be worried the audience won’t “get it.” Jen’s husband is a foreigner who speaks English, there to appreciate the culture in sort of a detached way. He does not participate in the rest of the movie. The whole point is that you take what you want from it, but those who are willing to “go with the flow” without the comfort of being lead somewhere intentional are going to be rewarded the most.