Haptic Landscapes, Sick Bodies, and Ecological Sensibility in the Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films have been studied for their capacity to stir debate on diverse aspects of the Anthropocene, such as human relationships with the nonhuman, the entanglements of naturecultures, and experimental forms as articulations of an approach to slow ecocinema. Considering previous ecocritical studies of Apichatpong’s filmography, this chapter investigates the convergence of the haptic qualities of the landscapes and the appearance and interaction with/in those landscapes of bodies affected by illness. To this end, a reflection is offered on Apichatpong’s articulation of a cinematic dispositif in his films that place the disease-landscape binary at the heart of the ecological discourse, i.e., Blissfully Yours (2002), Cemetery of Splendour (2015), and Memoria (2021). These films are analysed in conjunction with the notion of trans-corporeality and the dispositif of landscapes, to demonstrate how Apichatpong’s films incorporate a notion of ecological sensibility.