Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives ending explained

What happens

Boonmee dies in the cave, his wife and son beside him. After the funeral, Tong leaves the monkhood and goes to a hotel with Jen. They split into two versions: ordinary selves watching television, doubles out at a karaoke show.

The last image

Jen and Tong sit side by side on a hotel bed watching television, while their doubles are somewhere else in the same night.

Three readings

1 · Parallel livesThe doubles show a self can exist in several forms at once, as Boonmee's past lives did.

2 · Return to ordinary lifeGrief gives way to television and karaoke, because life simply goes on after death.

3 · Haunted presentLike the nation's unspoken violence, the past never leaves; it sits beside everyday life.

What it says

Boonmee treated death as one more passage, so the film refuses a final full stop. It closes in the everyday, suggesting nothing is fully gone, only moved into another room, with the past living on beside the present.