Apichatpong’s new film, “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” — now there’s a marketable title! — has become both a sensation and a point of contention at Cannes this year. It was the top-ranked narrative feature in indieWIRE’s poll of Cannes critics, and ranked second overall behind Charles Ferguson’s financial-crisis documentary “Inside Job.” (That’s just about the most mismatched double bill I can imagine.) I’ve heard one prominent American critic call Apichatpong “clearly the greatest filmmaker in the world,” while a more acerbic critic imagined a dinner-table conversation back home: “‘Honey, what’s playing tonight?’ ‘A two-hour Buddhist tone poem about death, with lots of kidney-rinsing.’ ‘Call a sitter!’”

“Uncle Boonmee” — immediately dubbed “Uncle Bonghit” by press-room wags — offers a somewhat more comprehensible narrative than Apichatpong’s previous films, but that’s not saying a whole lot. It does indeed concern a man named Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) who is dying of kidney disease on his farm in the remote jungles of northern Thailand, a favorite Apichatpong location. But it’s not like we get to know him that well. Possibly the introductory episode involving a runaway water buffalo — Apichatpong’s films always have a fair bit of action before the opening credits, although “action” may not be the right word — and the interpolated fairy tale about a princess who mates with a talking catfish in a forest pond are aspects of Boonmee’s previous lives. I can’t be sure about that, but I am fairly sure that’s the first human-catfish sex scene in cinema history.

Boonmee’s wife and son return to him in his final days, although his wife is long dead and his son mated with a ghost-monkey in the forest and then transmuted into one himself. (I hate when that happens.) Like a lot of Apichatpong’s special effects, the red-eyed, jungle-dwelling, Sasquatch-esque ghost monkeys are both genuinely spooky and borderline ridiculous. It’s as if he’s using the cheap techniques of grade-B Asian cinema to indicate real magic, terror and wonder. In the film’s most haunting sequence, Boonmee’s dead wife lead him and his sister on a night journey into a spectacular cave. Again, this might be a metaphor for the womb in which Boonmee will be reborn as he continues on the wheel of Samsara, or it might, I guess, just be a dying man’s last outing with those he loves most.

I need to see “Uncle Boonmee” again before I try to review it for real — the last days of Cannes are an awful backdrop for this kind of leisurely, allusive, poetic experience — but I have no problem with Apichatpong or his dreamlike movies. If you’re feeling adventurous, and willing to detach from normal narrative expectations, you might find “Uncle Boonmee” richly rewarding. I do wonder whether there’s something odd about the way Western critics have embraced him. Maybe it reflects an ultra-sophisticated form of Orientalism, or maybe it’s just “Mekons syndrome,” meaning the critic’s tendency to overvalue obscure material beloved primarily by other critics.

This is a director with a highly specialized, even unique personal aesthetic, which is likely to appeal to almost no one in his home country (his movies have barely been seen in Thailand) and only to a tiny intellectual elite in the West. Apichatpong is clearly making the films he wants to make, and more power to him. It isn’t his fault that 99.9 percent of moviegoers have never heard of him, and wouldn’t be interested if they had. But cinema is a public art if it’s anything at all, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul is dangerously close to becoming a great artist — or one celebrated as such — without a public audience.

Bangkok’s skyline was blotted by black smoke from more than two dozen buildings set ablaze — including Thailand’s stock exchange, main power company, banks, a movie theater and one of Asia’s largest shopping malls.

At least six people were killed in clashes that followed the army’s storming of the protest camp Wednesday. Witnesses said another six to eight bodies were in a temple where hundreds of demonstrators, including women and children, had sought sanctuary.

Since the Red Shirts began their protest in mid-March, at least 74 people — mostly civilians — have been killed and nearly 1,800 wounded. Of those, 45 people have died in clashes that started May 13 after the army tried to blockade their 1-square-mile (3-square-kilometer) camp.

While many of the rioters were believed to be members of the Red Shirts and their sympathizers, there was also an element of criminals and young hoodlums involved in the mayhem in the city of 10 million people.

The protest and violence in one of Southeast Asia’s most stable countries has damaged its economy and tourism industry.

With the top Red Shirt leaders in custody, it was unclear what the next move would be for the protesters who had demanded the ouster of the prime minister’s government, the dissolution of parliament and new elections. The protesters, many of them poor farmers or members of the urban underclass, say Abhisit came to power illegitimately and is oblivious to their plight.

The crackdown should silence the large number of government supporters who were urging a harder line, and the rioting that followed may extinguish the widespread sympathy many had for the protesters’ cause.

But that same violence also showed a serious intelligence lapse by the military, and the failure to secure areas of the capital raised doubt over how any unrest in the protesters’ heartland of the north and northeast can be stilled.

Many Thais feel that any short-term peace may have been purchased at the price of further polarization that will lead to years of bitter, cyclical conflict.

“The Reds rampaged and committed to armed resistance,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist from Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “Right now, they are just burning buildings, but later on, what if they picked up arms to fight the bureaucrats, security forces in other parts of Bangkok, and especially in the countryside? So this is just the beginning. The crackdown didn’t make them retreat fully. Things will get much worse still.”

Thitinan said the government will need to seek a political settlement. “The problem now is that who does the government talk to?” he said.

Some point to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup and fled into exile before being sentenced to two years in prison for corruption. The government has accused him of bankrolling the protests and refuses to make any deals with him until he comes back to serve his sentence.

The crackdown began soon after dawn Wednesday, as hundreds of troops with M-16s converged on the Red Shirts’ camp, where nearby high-end malls and hotels have been shuttered by the prolonged protest.

Armored vehicles crashed through barricades of piled tires and bamboo stakes, and soldiers then gradually moved toward the protesters’ hub, opening fire with live ammunition and drawing return fire from militant Red Shirts, according to Associated Press reporters at the scene.

Bullets flew and several grenades exploded near the soldiers, forcing them to pull back briefly before pushing forward.

Among the dead was an Italian photographer. A Canadian freelance reporter was wounded by shrapnel and a reporter for the British newspaper The Independent was shot in the leg. Two other journalists were wounded earlier — one Dutchman and an American documentary filmmaker.

The unrest spread outside Bangkok, with Thai media reporting that protesters set fire to government offices in the city of Udon Thani and vandalized a city building in Khon Kaen. Udon Thani’s governor asked the military to intervene.

TV reports also showed troops retreating after being attacked by mobs in Ubon Ratchathani, and more unrest was reported in the northern city of Chiang Mai, Thailand’s third-largest.

After protest leaders surrendered, their enraged followers scattered to other parts of the city to set fires, and some looting was reported.

One of the most striking images was gray smoke pouring from Bangkok’s landmark CentralWorld shopping mall. One of Southeast Asia’s largest shopping complexes, it measured 550,000 square meters (5.9 million square feet) and its total retail area was 1 million square meters (11 million square feet) — about twice as big as the giant Mall of America in Minnesota.

Firefighters trying to douse the flames at some of the buildings were forced to retreat for several hours because of gunfire.

Thailand’s stock exchange will be closed for the rest of the week after the building’s ground floor was set on fire, according to its president, Patareeya Benjapolchai.

She told the AP that the exchange, where about $600 million of shares change hands each day, may reopen Monday. The central bank, meanwhile, said all financial institutions in Bangkok, including commercial banks, would be shut Thursday and Friday.

Cabinet minister Satit Vongnongteay described the chaos as anticipated “aftershocks” of the crackdown.

Rioters also turned their rage on the local media, which has been accused of pro-government coverage. They attacked the offices of state-run Channel 3, setting fire to cars outside and puncturing water pipes that flooded the building.

“At Channel 3 need urgent help from police, soldiers!!!” tweeted news anchor Patcharasri Benjamasa. “News cars were smashed and they are about to invade the building.”

The building was set on fire, but its staff fled to safety. The English-language Bangkok Post newspaper evacuated its staff over fears of an attack.

Abhisit said in a televised address Wednesday night that troops had been given the go-ahead to shoot suspected arsonists. A 10-hour curfew took effect in Bangkok and other provinces at 8 p.m., and the government said army operations would continue through the night. Another announcement said captured arsonists and “terrorists” could face capital punishment.

It is the first time that Bangkok has been put under curfew since 1992, when the army killed dozens of pro-democracy demonstrators seeking the ouster of a military-backed government in a crisis now know as “Black May.”

“Tonight is going to be another worrisome night,” government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said.

Authorities also imposed a partial media blackout on local TV stations, saying all of them would have to show government-prepared bulletins.

Seven top Red Shirt leaders surrendered Wednesday, saying they could not stand seeing their supporters being killed.

“Brothers and sisters, I’m sorry I cannot see you off the way I welcomed you all when you arrived here. But please be assured that our hearts will always be with you,” Nattawut Saikua, a key leader, said as he was arrested. “Please return home.”

Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, another Red Shirt leader, said the movement would go on despite the day’s events.

“This is not the end,” he said. “It will spread further and the situation will deteriorate. Initially, independent mass movements in Bangkok and other provinces will begin, then riots will ensue. This will be done by individuals, not by protest leaders. The crowds will reunite soon.”

——

Associated Press writers Thanyarat Doksone, Chris Blake, Jocelyn Gecker, Vijay Joshi, Eric Talmadge, Grant Peck and Stephen Wright contributed to this report.

BANGKOK (AP) — Downtown Bangkok became a flaming battleground Wednesday as an army assault forced anti-government protest leaders to surrender, enraging followers who shot grenades and set fire to landmark buildings, cloaking the skyline in black smoke.

Using live ammunition, troops dispersed thousands of Red Shirt protesters who had been camped in the capital’s premier shopping and residential district for weeks. Five protesters and an Italian news photographer were killed in the ensuing gunbattles and about 60 wounded.

After Red Shirt leaders gave themselves up to police, rioters set fires at the Stock Exchange, several banks, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Electricity Authority, the Central World, one of Asia’s biggest shopping malls, and cinema that burned to ground. There were reports of looting.

Firefighters retreated after protesters shot guns at them, and thick smoke drifted across the sky of this city of 10 million people.

Sporadic clashes between troops and protesters continued in the night at the main protest camp.

The chaos in Bangkok in the wake of the two-month protest will deepen the severe impact dealt to the economy and tourism industry of Thailand, a key U.S. ally and long considered one of the more stable countries in Southeast Asia. The Red Shirts had demanded the ouster of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s government, the dissolution of Parliament and new elections.

The government declared an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in Bangkok, and said army operations would continue through the night.

“Tonight is going to be another worrisome night,” government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said.

It also imposed a partial media blackout on local TV stations, saying all of them will have to air government-prepared bulletins.

“They might be able to show their regular news programs. But we are concerned about their live broadcasts from the scenes,” Panitan said. “There will be more (government) programs … to be shown simultaneously by all stations,” he said.

Protesters turned their rage on the local media, which they have accused of pro-government coverage. They attacked the offices of state-run Channel 3, setting fire to cars outside and puncturing water pipes that flooded the building.

“At Channel 3 need urgent help from police, soldiers!!!” tweeted news anchor Patcharasri Benjamasa. “News cars were smashed and they are about to invade the building.”

Hours later its building was on fire. Its executives were evacuated by helicopter and police rescued other staff. The English-language Bangkok Post newspaper evacuated its staff after threats from the Red Shirts. A large office building down the street from the Post was set afire.

Unrest also spread to the rural northeast of the country, where Red Shirts, who claim Abhisit’s government is elitist and oblivious to their plight, retain strong support.

Local media reported protesters set fire to government offices in the city of Udon Thani and vandalized a city hall in Khon Kaen. Udon Thani’s governor asked the military to intervene. TV images also showed troops retreating after being attacked by mobs in Ubon Ratchathani.

Cabinet minister Satit Vongnongteay described the chaos as anticipated “aftershocks.”

“There are violent-prone protesters who remain angry,” Satit told a news conference.

At least 45 people have been killed, most of them civilians, in a week of violence in Bangkok as a military attempt to blockade the protesters — who had camped in the 1-square-mile (3-square-kilometer) Rajprasong district for six weeks — instead touched off street fighting, with soldiers firing on protesters who fought back mostly with homemade weapons.

The final crackdown began soon after dawn Wednesday, as hundreds of troops armed with M-16s converged on the Red Shirt base in Rajprasong, where high-end malls and hotels have been shuttered by the prolonged protest.

Armored vehicles crashed through barricades of piled tires and bamboo stakes, then soldiers gradually moved toward the protesters’ hub, opening fire and drawing return fire from militant Red Shirts, Associated Press journalists saw.

Bullets flew overhead and several grenades exploded near the soldiers, forcing them to pull back and take cover briefly before pushing forward. A Canadian freelance reporter was injured by grenade shrapnel. Two other journalists were wounded earlier, one Dutch man and an American documentary filmmaker. An Italian photographer was killed.

With no hope of resisting the military’s advance, seven top Red Shirt leaders turned themselves in on Wednesday afternoon, saying they cannot see their supporters — women and children among them — being killed anymore.

“Brothers and sisters, I’m sorry I cannot see you off the way I welcomed you all when you arrived here. But please be assured that our hearts will always be with you,” Nattawut Saikua, a key leader, said as he was being arrested.

“Please return home,” he said.

By mid-afternoon, the army announced it had gained control of the protest zone and the operations had ended — nine hours after troops launched the pre-dawn assault.

“Police officers and soldiers have now stopped their operation,” army spokesman Col. Sansern Kawekamnerd said.

——

Associated Press writers Thanyarat Doksone, Jocelyn Gecker, Vijay Joshi, Eric Talmadge and Chris Blake contributed to this report.

Troops — including sharpshooters positioned on high buildings — have used live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas. Since the violence flared on May 14, 38 protesters were killed by gunfire and 313 wounded in violence that turned parts of Bangkok, a city known for its crime-free nightlife, into deserted wastelands. One soldier from the government side has died.

“Death is a normal thing, that’s what I told my wife when I joined the Red Shirts,” Sakhorn, a 58-year-old delivery driver, told The Associated Press during a lull in the fighting from behind a 3-meter (10-foot) -high wall of tires that protesters had built on a major boulevard.

Normally, the road that runs across Bangkok is choked with traffic. Today, it is littered with the debris of rioting: burning tires, broken bottles, confetti-like paper strips from detonated fireworks, and mounds of uncollected garbage.

The protesters fight with imaginative weapons. Behind one tire wall, masked rioters filled bottles with pieces of glass, taped it with a large firecracker, lit the fuse and hurled it at the soldiers about 100 meters away. It barely reached halfway.

Another helmeted protester tried to throw a Molotov cocktail but the top came off before he let it go, and burning gasoline spilled on his back, setting his shirt on fire. Friends quickly doused the flames.

In Bon Kai, a working class neighborhood, protesters put a few drops of flammable liquid into a metal pipe, one end of which was fitted with a firework bomb. A fuse was lit at the other end to ignite the liquid, which propelled the bomb toward the soldiers in a smoky trajectory.

Meanwhile, his comrade lit a string of firecrackers that made a sound similar to automatic rifle fire while a friend held up a dust pan and pointed its handle at soldiers, pretending to be firing a gun.

A shot rang out and another comrade fell, hit by a bullet. His injury was not life-threatening.

Not all protesters are so poorly armed. Some have been seen with guns, and the government says it has come under attack from rifle fire and grenades. It is these armed demonstrators that the army says are beings targeted with live ammunition.

“We have no policy to attack civilians. Our officers respond militarily when they are attacked. They do follow the rules. They work under the scrutiny of local and foreign media,” said government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn.

On Sunday night, AP reporters saw what appeared to be gunfire coming from both sides for about five hours near a luxury hotel.

Also raising concern among Thais is that some children have joined the fight.

Natchapon Soiket, a 15-year-old vocational school student, carries tires and food to fighters on the front line. His mother, a factory worker in Nakhon Pathom province outside Bangkok, told him not to go, but he ignored her.

“Ultimately I want to see peace, but I am willing to die for the sake of my brothers and sisters,” said the bare-chested teenager in dirty jeans, his hands and face black with residue from the tires he had been rolling.

AP reporters have seen children as young as 12 lighting fuses of homemade rockets.

The government has played a video on local TV showing a man holding a toddler over a tire barricade, alleging that the rioters are using children as human shields.

On Tuesday, a 12-year-old boy was arrested for setting buildings on fire.

The Red Shirts are mostly urban and rural poor, rebelling against a political structure that traditionally favored the rich and the military-backed political elite. The Reds are bankrolled by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup by the military and lives in exile.

Two subsequent pro-Thaksin governments were removed by court decisions, and Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva came to power in December 2008 without winning an election after being chosen by lawmakers. The turmoil continued as Thaksin roused his supporters with speeches delivered live by video link.

Thaksin, a telecommunications billionaire, was criticized as corrupt, but his populist policies made him into a Robin Hood-style figure for many of Thailand’s poor.

Abhisit says he is willing to hold elections in November and talk to the Red Shirts — if they stop the street violence and end their protest, which began two months ago. The Red Shirts say they will stop the violence if the troops withdraw.

“People of higher class look down upon us even though we serve them,” said the slingshot-wielding Sakhorn, who has spent the last four nights sleeping on the streets behind the tire barricades, without a shower or a change of clothes. “They think we are stupid because we are poor.”

With a flourish, he pulled the slingshot and white pebbles from the pocket of his jeans, which are shredded at the left knee.

“This is all I have got, and the government calls me a terrorist!” he said. “I believe in negotiations if it done by our leaders. If not, we will keep fighting even if it takes years.”

——

Associated Press writer Thanyarat Doksone contributed to this story.

Among those wounded were two Thai journalists and a Canadian reporter, who was in a serious condition.

With security deteriorating and hopes of a peaceful resolution to the standoff increasingly unlikely, what was once one of Southeast Asia’s most stable democracies and magnets of foreign investment has been thrust deep into political uncertainty. The crisis threatens its stability, economy and already-decimated tourism industry.

Violence escalated after a rogue army general regarded as a military adviser to the Red Shirt protesters was shot in the head Thursday evening, possibly by a sniper. A doctor said Maj. Gen. Khattiya Sawasdiphol was still in a coma Friday and he could “die at any moment.”

Clashes since then have killed five and wounded 81, officials said.

“We are being surrounded. We are being crushed. The soldiers are closing in on us. This is not a civil war yet, but it’s very, very cruel,” Weng Tojirakarn, a protest leader, told The Associated Press.

Fighting has now killed 34 people and injured hundreds since the Red Shirts, mostly rural poor, began camping in the capital on March 12, in a bid to force out Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. They claim his coalition government came to power illegitimately through manipulation of the courts and the backing of the powerful military, which in 2006 forced the populist premier favored by the Red Shirts, Thaksin Shinawatra, from office in a coup.

Last week, Abhisit offered November elections, raising hopes that a compromise could be reached with the Red Shirts, who have been demanding immediate elections. Those hopes were dashed after Red Shirt leaders made more demands.

Late Thursday, the army moved to seal off the Red Shirt encampment in an upscale commercial district of the capital. Some 10,000 protesters, women and children among them, have crammed into the area.

“Our policy is not to disperse the protesters,” government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said late Friday. He said their mission was to set up checkpoints and “tighten” the area around the protest, but “there have been attempts to agitate the officers.”

In later speech on national TV, Panitan said security forces hadn’t entered the demonstration area but were attacked and forced to protect themselves.

He said security efforts would be stepped up in the coming days and “many areas would be under control soon.” As he said that a large explosion rang out in central Bangkok.

Friday’s violence was initially centered on a small area home to several foreign embassies, including those of the U.S. and Japan which were forced to close, but by midafternoon had spread around the 1-square-mile (3-square-kilometer) protest zone barricaded with bamboo stakes and tires. The British, New Zealand and the Dutch embassies, which are in the vicinity, also were shut.

Soldiers crouched behind a raised road divider in one area and fired rubber bullets, live ammunition and tear gas shells. Army vehicles were seen speeding on deserted streets littered with stones and debris. Protesters retreated and hurled rocks and insults.

Among Friday’s casualties, a Thai cameraman from the VoiceTV news website was shot in his left thigh and a photographer for Matichon newspaper was shot in the leg, the news outlets said.

Canadian freelance journalist Nelson Rand, who was working for France 24 news channel, was hit by three bullets, the channel reported. One bullet perforated his leg, another hit his abdomen, another hit his wrist. He underwent surgery and was recovering.

Friday morning, protesters captured and vandalized two military water cannon trucks at a key intersection in the business district, just outside the Red Shirt encampment. They ripped the cannon from its moorings and used its plastic barrel to shoot firecrackers from behind a sandbag bunker they had commandeered from soldiers.

They later set fire to a police bus that sent thick plumes of smoke into the sky. Soldiers fired automatic rifles repeatedly.

Soldiers used a loudspeaker to send a message to the Red Shirts: “We are the people’s army. We are just doing our duty for the nation. Brothers and sisters, let’s talk together.”

But a group of aggressive young protesters approached them on motorcycles and on foot, shouting obscenities. Two soldiers fired shotguns into the air and they pulled back but kept up their abuse.

Major roads around the protest site were closed to traffic, and the city’s subway and elevated train shut early. Many shops in the capital also were shuttered.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Kornvika Klinpraneat, 28, a worker at a mini-mart near the protest area. “This is like a civil war. The battle is being fought in the middle of a city with innocent people being injured and killed.”

The renegade army general Khattiya, who is accused of creating a paramilitary force for the Red Shirts, was shot in the head while talking to reporters just inside the perimeter of the protesters’ encampment. Director of the hospital treating him, Dr. Chaiwan Charoenchokthawee, said Friday that Khattiya “could die at any moment.”

It was not known who shot Khattiya, better known by the nickname Seh Daeng. But the Red Shirts blamed a government sniper.

“This is illegal use of force ordered by Abhisit Vejjajiva,” said Arisman Pongruengrong, a Red Shirt leader. “Seh Daeng was shot by a government sniper. This is clearly a use of war weapons on the people.”

The army denied it tried to kill Khattiya.

“It has nothing to do with the military. It has never been our policy (to assassinate). We have been avoiding violence,” said Col. Sansern Kaewkamnerd, an army spokesman. Only a forensic investigation will determine who was behind the shooting, he said.

The two-day clashes marked the worst continuous episode of violence since April 10, when 25 people were killed and more than 800 injured in clashes between Red Shirts and troops in Bangkok’s historic area. Sporadic clashes have occurred since then.

The Red Shirts see Abhisit’s government as serving an elite insensitive to the plight of most Thais. The protesters include many supporters of former prime minister Thaksin whose allies won elections in 2007 after his ouster. Two subsequent pro-Thaksin governments were disbanded by court rulings before Abhisit was elected by Parliament.

Thaksin, a former telecommunications billionaire who fled overseas to avoid a corruption conviction, has publicly encouraged the protests and is widely believed to be helping bankroll them. He claims to be a victim of political persecution.

———-

Associated Press writers Vijay Joshi, Jocelyn Gecker, Denis D. Gray and Chris Blake contributed to this report. Additional research by Warangkana Tempati.