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Memoria: Atmospheric and Meditative, an Exhausting, Inscrutable Tone Poem


Memoria is all about the sounds. The sounds of the wind in the trees, or of the busy thoroughfare of the city; of the far-off birds that break the stillness, or those man-made sounds of computer software or musical instruments being played. And of course the sound of a great mechanical din that comes at Jessica Holland (Tilda Swinton) recurringly without warning, and which she strives to find the source of in unaccustomed places. Sound is essential, it is the world, but it is also …interiority? History?  It’s not clear exactly what writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is getting at in this film that ruminates on existential fancies and persona, life and death, nature and the cosmos, and anthropology among other things -but what is certain is that sound fascinates him as an artistic device, possibly to a fault. Although it is curious to take in.
The winner of a Palme D’Or for his 2010 film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,  Apichatpong Weerasethakul has been  a significant (if difficult to pronounce) name in the art film and art installation world for over a decade. Memoria premiered at the 2021 Cannes Festival and won the Jury Prize, showing that they’re still quite fond of him over there. Yet I’ve never seen any of his work and I get the sense that even in the film enthusiast world he is a bit obscure, a bit inaccessible perhaps. He is a capital-A arthouse filmmaker, and I don’t know that I was quite ready for that when I sat down in a theatre to watch Memoria -a movie that is equal parts really interesting and really difficult to sit through.
Apichatpong is a Thai filmmaker, but Memoria is set in Colombia and is almost entirely in Spanish. However it is centred on a white British expat and the film was co-produced internationally, giving it then something of a nebulous cultural identity -it’s been called an English debut (despite featuring only minimal English), and at the same time was Colombia’s entry for Best International Film at the Oscars. The plot is simple and largely insubstantial: Jessica, a woman possibly involved in an academic field in Bogota is hearing this strange, tremulous sound, only audible to herself and she can hardly sleep because of it. No medical examinations indicate anything wrong in her head and she struggles to pinpoint what exactly the sound even is. She gets some help from a university sound engineer, but it’s not enough. Ultimately she pursues it into the countryside where she meets a curious old fish scaler. Also she has a sister in the hospital and is in some way invested in an excavation that has recently unearthed the body of a girl who died thousands of years ago.  That’s about all that can be ascertained for sure.
Much of the movie exists around this plot rather than a part of it, so much time devoted to atmosphere and a kind of mysterious simmering tension. Between scenes of meeting with the young Hernán (Juan Pablo Urrego) for instance, about a three minute sequence concerns Jessica watching and following a stray dog in a public patio at night. Another just sees her taking in with several students a musical performance at a library for several minutes, cutting only once to show the reverse shot which is held for an equivalent duration. That seems to be Apichatpong’s favourite thing. The movie is full of long takes, usually without any camera movement and usually in sustained silence -at least from the characters. And it’s a choice that can be either compelling or exhausting or both given the context. That aforementioned scene for example has plenty of things to draw the eye in the various facial and body language responses of the students. But as the film goes late and these takes approach the five to ten minute mark, their visual and aural components can only retain interest so long.
I could count the number of unbroken shots in the final forty-five minutes or so. At one point a character goes to sleep, the camera stays fixed on his sleeping form for a while before cutting to a wide-shot of Jessica watching the slumber, which is held for at least five minutes, and then another take on him for a little longer before waking up again. And there is something interesting there, nature and its’ movement acting as a reflection of the mystique of this character -who sleeps with eyes open and seemingly no need to breathe. But also Apichatpong clearly finds it all way more captivating than it is. It really tests the audience a lot too; I get the sense -especially in the final long take, which sees two people at a table holding hands in front of a window, occasionally talking but with long pauses, for what feels like maybe fifteen minutes (a whole ninth of the movie)- that the purpose in these extreme choices is to evoke a kind of meditation, to be alone with your directed thoughts as the people on screen are. The problem there is it requires a very specific focused mind going in, and most are probably going to wander during these sequences -especially with nothing particularly changing on screen to keep your attention. Another guy in the theatre with me fell asleep.
Where narrative and theme are concerned in the midst of this, it’s just about impenetrable -which makes the artistic choices all the more alien, frustrating even. Beyond the easily palpable on the surface, it’s hard to discern what the movie is saying, what its’ symbols and metaphors, especially in the last act, are meant to represent. There are hints towards those themes I mentioned earlier, but not in a kind of overarching or clear sense -they’re simply suggested as themes without expansion. Jessica’s journey becomes less about resolving her malady as learning to come to peace with it –as one might with tinnitus or some other hearing impairment. But on the way there are allusions that come into play, spiritual and otherworldly. Apichatpong is clearly influenced by Tarkovsky, and his mood in this later stretch draws heavily on the enigmatic ambience of Solaris. But there doesn’t appear to be a strong connective tissue between the elements in focus by this mood: the suggestion of recurrence, reincarnation, and the ultimate source of that unusual sound. It may be that the movie is just too dense for me. It may be that I figure it out after deliberation long after this review is published. For the moment though I’m willing to state that its’ reach exceeds its’ grasp, and that it might have been better just eschewing traditional narrative altogether like a Koyaanisqatsi-type experiment –of which it also in moments is seeming to emulate.
Memoria is a movie of immense immersion, I’ll give it that. And the driving ideas behind Apichatpong’s choices are stimulating –I don’t oppose his methods so much as his unwillingness to build much tangible character, narrative, visual, or thematic essence around them. There’s a lot of great artistry involved, and I’m especially impressed Tilda Swinton appears to have learned a fair bit of Spanish for the part. But it doesn’t resonate in the way its meant to, in spite of its’ best and beautiful efforts. 

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