태국 불교에 내재된 종교 의식(意識): 영화 「엉클 분미」를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper is about Thai film「Uncle Boonmee : who can recall his past lives」 which won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010, but it was criticized as a difficult film. In this film, I researched the characteristics of Thai Religious Rituals which embedded in Thai Buddhism. In Thailand around 94% of whole population believes Theravada Buddhism. The characteristics of Thai Buddhism is that the mixture of a variety of Religions: Indigenous-animist, Brahmanic, Buddist, and Brahmanism and they co-exist naturally in Thai society. They are gradually historically developed over the long period to Thai religious system. I analyzed the ambiguous and difficult scenes of the film by using Jacques Lacan`s theory as needed. He called the world composed of images, the imaginary, and called the world dominated by language and social norms, the symbolic. And the world connected between these two worlds was called the real. This film also connected with the three stages of Jacques Lacan in that fantasy and reality are connected in every part of his scenes. According to this analysis, I examined Buddhism, Brahmanism, and animism, which have been unified by the Thai government as the Thai Buddhism, but still embedded in the religious rituals of Thai. I also analyzed the characteristics of Thai religious system and how they reflected in the Thai society through the unique characters in the film. For example, uncle Boonmee`s past lives and karma, his son Bunssong who turned into a monkey phi(spirit), his wife Huai who died and appeared as a khwan(ghost), and an ugly princess who can have a new life by the power of water. Specifically, uncle Boonmee, the main character of the film, shows believes of reincarnation, karma, and past, present, future lives. His son Boonssong who left home and turned into a monkey spirit shows the worship of animistic spirits. And the ugly princess who turned into a fish spirit with the help of Catfish in the water and lives the new life shows the Thai worship of water. In addition, through Boonmee`s dead wife, Huai, who appears as a ghost, we can see the mixture of Thai Buddhism composed of the reincarnation of Buddhism, animism, and `khwan` spirit of Brahmanism. In conclusion, the film「Uncle Boonmee: who can recall his past lives」implicitly reflected the coexistence of various religions in Thai Buddhism, and because of this factors, this movie was criticized as a difficult film by reviewers.