‘9 Temples to Heaven’ Review: Spiritual Road Movie Takes a Surrealist Detour in Weerasethakul Collaborator’s Fiction Debut

Years after working as assistant director for Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul on such masterpieces as “Tropical Malady” and “Memoria” and directing a handful of documentaries, Sompot Chidgasornpongse delivers his first fiction feature, “9 Temples to Heaven.” This slow-burn road movie waxes spiritual about tradition and modernity while embedding itself in the everyday drama of the average Thai family. Following a world premiere at Cannes, the film is now Thailand’s official bet for the 2027 Best International Feature Oscar race. Whereas Weerasethakul insists on a more oneiric, sensual, and animistic storytelling logic, Chidgasornpongse weaponizes the beauty of Thai architecture to mostly serve a slice-of-life approach to a story that finds an extended Thai family of nine on a day-long trip to nine Buddhist temples. That aligns with the Buddhist concept of “making merit”: doing good, meaningful deeds to attract good karma in this world and beyond. At the heart of the pilgrimage is Grandma Saluay (Amara Ramnarong), the ailing matriarch who must be taken to the nine temples for a longer life or at least a blessed afterlife, according to a premonition by the boss of her son Sakol (Surachai Ningsanond), who can’t help but cozy up to his superior. Sakol insists the merit-making should be organized around the number nine, which represents good fortune in Thai culture. And yet, for merit-making to be effective, it must hinge on pure, earnest intentions. That doesn’t seem to be the case for Sakol’s son Tor (Sompot Songkampol), who cannot look past his father’s perceived selfishness for forcing his grandmother and the entire family to complete all nine stops in just a day; that indeed the trip happens for Sakol’s benefit rather than Grandma Saluay’s. The matriarch’s confession during their visit to the first temple might just affirm that hunch: “They always want me to go outside. They’re afraid I’ll die in their house and make a mess.” But the sly, observant film inches toward other sources of Tor’s disapproval of the trip. The film feels particularly porous despite its over-two-hour running time, a testament not only to Chidgasornpongse’s longtime team-up with Weerasethakul (here credited as producer) but also to his own dramaturgical strengths. Much of the tension within the family unit arises inside the minivan and car transporting them from one temple to another, in the ways in which the writer/director explores many seating arrangements and character configurations to expose generational differences, diverging philosophies, and intellectual and emotional intimacy among the characters. Through their conversations while in transit, Chidgasornpongse slowly uncoils the affairs haunting each character, from the seemingly quotidian to the most profound. For one, the teenage girl Prae (Nichmon Shintadapong) wants to transfer to a coed high school, away from the drama of the all-girls school she’s currently attending, while the free-spirited Koon (Poon Sirapob), who’s about to study in Germany, talks about his desire to record Grandma Saluay’s voice as a keepsake and ponders why sound does not exist in dreams. They visit a second temple, where a monk waxes loquacious about how practicing meditation takes away one’s pain. Afterward, Koon reveals that meditating once made him feel “a sudden urge to die,” a feeling he thought was akin to reaching enlightenment. A monk had dismissed it as “just bad karma from his past lives haunting him” and advised him to eat cheese to dispel that nagging disquiet. Koon would later be diagnosed with depression, and has since feared meditating again. Moments of quiet revelation like this illustrate Chidgasornpongse’s contemplative inquiry into the fissures between dogmatic practice and modern pragmatism — leaving Koon seemingly perpetually adrift, as neither side brings him closer to the source of his growing unrest. At times, the Thai filmmaker even suggests that all the merit-making might be a sort of scam. They depict, for instance, a temple backroom converted into a storage room where plastic boxes of donations pour in, neatly arranged and sorted as if ready to be resold at a higher price. Meanwhile, one monk intones that more offerings will bring the family greater blessing and peace. Chidgasornpongse argues that capitalist accumulation can persist even within such sacred walls. Filmed largely in natural daylight, the film drifts between still, unhurried, panning shots to evoke not only the spiritual energy that keeps the temples humming but also a world in slow, gradual decay. Chidgasornpongse crystallizes that cosmic doom further when Grandma Saluay falls half-asleep or stares out the van window, her mind drifting into the ether. At that point, the film pivots to a more surreal register, presenting bright, clear skies that are slowly, eerily engulfed in darkness. Here, the movie acquires an ambiguous power, and the proceedings begin to head south. Already foreshadowed by the opening sequence, it’s the same darkness where “9 Temples to Heaven” evocatively ends, where both the living and the dead somehow coexist, haunted by the ghosts of their own voices. Echoes of Weerasethakul aside, Chidgasornpongse has sculpted a stirring, unnerving film with its own acuity and rhythm. Grade: B+ “9 Temples to Heaven” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival before playing New York. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.