[Joe's] latest film is as enveloping as anything he’s ever made: a work that’s as darkly comic on subjects as specific as hospital regulation as it is sober-minded about perils as universal as comfortable living, one open to the possibilities of spiritual awakening while confronting us with questions of belief.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Maintaining his fondness for long, contemplative shots, Weerasethakul creates a deceptively serene sense of storytelling, with gentle grace notes of wry humour.
Delicately placed on a sonic bedrock of chirping birds and distant traffic, Cemetery of Splendour is a whisper of a film that can only cast its spell if you let your breathing slow and give yourself over to the urgency of its spectral dimension.
Slant Magazine by James Lattimer
It gently and often imperceptibly shifts between past and present, legend and modernity, wakefulness and reverie.
It is so lived-in and authentic in its real-world detail, and so enigmatic and mysterious in its diversions and sidelong glances, that it's difficult not to see it as overridingly personal, not just to the director but to the viewer. It's a true act of the most optimistic communication and communion.
For the occasional lapse...there is often a striking image or sly moment of humour to take away and overall, the film rewards persistence.
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
Past lives and ancient ancestors are evoked through conversations that are both cryptic and oddly matter-of-fact, in a work that has the realistic vibe of a documentary but the unearthly qualities of a sustained reverie.
While Cemetery of Splendor is unabashedly a work of slow cinema, the oft-hurled pejorative of “difficult” seems a particularly poor fit for a film whose unforced lyricism could scarcely be more graceful or inviting.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It is such a strange film in its way, stranger still if you are not accustomed to Weerasethakul’s work, and it needs a real investment of attention. But there is something sublime in it.
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
This is the same wondrous journey on which Apichatpong sends his audience: inwards and downwards, to a place where the simplest rhythms of everyday life become hallowed and mythic.