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| Writer/director/producer Apichatpong Weerasethakul |
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| The director on the set |
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| Actress Tilda Swinton on the set |
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| Swinton and Weerasethakul discussing a shot |
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| Tilda Swinton |
MEMORIA A Colombia Thailand France Germany Mexico Qatar United Kingdom China Switzerland (136 mi) 2021
As a kid I was drawn to jungles, animals, and mountains. During the 70s, I grew up reading novels about hunters looking for treasures from lost civilisations. However, Thailand does not possess ancient empires full of gold, nor headhunter tribes, nor anacondas. Forty years later, I am still drawn to such landscapes but they are covered now with layers of other stories. I am attracted to the history of Latin America as if it was a missing part of my youth. I have come to Colombia to collect expressions and memories, not the Amazonian gold. I am deeply in debt to the individuals I have met in various cities, from psychologists, archaeologists, engineers, activists, to junk collectors. Another important factor in the birth of this project is my own hallucination. While researching, I often heard a loud noise at dawn. It was internal and has occurred in many of the places I visited. This symptom is inseparable from my exposure to Colombia. It has formed the basis of a character whose audio experience synchronises with the country’s memory. I imagine the mountains here as an expression of people’s remembrances through centuries. The massive sierras, with their creases and creeks, are like the folds of the brain, or the curves of sound waves. With the scores of acts of violence and trauma, the terrain inflates and trembles, to become a country with neverending landslides and earthquakes. The film itself is also seeking for a balance in this active topography. Its skeletons, the images and sounds, are shaken out of place. Perhaps this is a ‘sweet spot’ where I and this film can synchronise, a state where delusion is the norm.
—Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Easily the most accessible Weerasethakul movie, the only one shot outside of the jungles of northeast Thailand near Khon Kaen where he grew up (restricted by an ongoing battle with censorship in his homeland), the only one spoken in English, also subtitled Spanish, and the only one featuring star actors, in this case Tilda Swinton and Jeanne Balibar, the French actress who got her start in the talkative Arnaud Desplechin movies before working with Olivier Assayas, Jacques Rivette, along with a host of other acclaimed directors, including this rare Pedro Costa documentary on her singing career, Ne Change Rien (Change Nothing) (2009). Perhaps a key to this film is actually viewed in the credits, where a long list of producers also includes Jia Zhang-ke, Danny Glover, and Tilda Swinton, a contingency of international contributors, while an even longer list is paid tribute, giving thanks to, among others, Scott Foundas, who used to be one of the more literate film critics, writing for Variety and Film Comment, yet has traded in his writing skills and is now a film acquisitions and development executive for Amazon Studios, probably wielding more influence, yet he’s less visible. This international conglomerate explains how films are financed today, as they no longer come from a specific country, yet this was named the official Oscar submission of Colombia for the Best International Feature Film category, failing to make the final cut, sharing the Jury Prize (3rd Place) with Nadav Lapid’s Ahed's Knee (Ha'berech) (2021) when it premiered at Cannes, listed at #1 as the best film of the year by Film Comment magazine, Best Films of 2021 - Film Comment, #1 by Hyperallergic, The Best of 2021: Our Top 10 Films - Hyperallergic, #2 by Cinema Scope, Cinema Scope: Top Ten Films of 2021 - Year-End Lists, while also named best film at the Chicago Film Festival, Festival Award Winners - Cinema Chicago. This film has had a very limited theatrical release, is not available through streaming and is not expected to ever be released on video, where it was initially planned to go from city to city, playing only in one location at a time, an unusual strategy, yet one that radically elevates each screening to an “experience,” but the low-budget nature of the film also means it is not usually viewed in the state-of-the-art theaters, so eventually screenings spread out across the country and the producers sent out screener DVD’s to Academy members. While decidedly understated and low-key, this has an epic and magisterial sweep to it, becoming a chronicle of the genesis and creation, his Terrence Malick 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of Life movie, yet ambitiously taking a different direction, remaining curiously under the radar throughout, following a series of inexplicable events, explored through a highly innovative yet complex sound design by Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr that creates a hypnotic effect, as the main feature of the film is an auditory sensory experience, growing ever more mysterious through a surreal yet unpredictable finale that simply elevates the material into an unfathomable realm of the cosmos. Constructing a film around the incomprehensibility of trauma, Jessica (Tilda Swinton) is an expat woman from Scotland who lives in Medellín, Colombia as an orchid botanist, but is visiting the capital of Bogotá while her sister Karen (Agnes Brekke) is hospitalized, while also studying the effect of a fungus on orchids. One night she is awakened from sleep by a strange bang, an ear-piercing sound, like a sonic boom, slowly getting up, opening doors, and peering out to try to find its source, yet it remains pitch black, with one of those glacially slow pans moving from the bedroom into a nearby living room, shot by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who has worked with this director since MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON (2000). Initially Jessica thinks the sound may have come from a construction project nearby, only to discover there is none. While visiting her sister in the hospital, she is being treated for an undefinable illness that may have to do with a dog in a dream or with her anthropological investigations of a group of indigenous people who do not wish to share their secrets. So just as mysteriously, a dog follows her on the street afterwards, but eventually goes its own way. While at the hospital, however, she learns more about an excavation project being carried out there, where she meets Agnes (Jeanne Balibar), an archaeologist who eventually takes her to an underground tunnel construction project, La Línea, where they are boring a hole beneath the Andes mountains, the largest road tunnel in the Americas that’s been halted by the discovery of 6000-year old human bones revealing the skeleton of a young girl with a hole in her skull, likely coming from a trephine, an intentional act that archaeologists believe came from a ritual death where the hole was designed to let out what people believed were demons or evil spirits.
Viewers are treated to an equally mysterious phenomenon, like something out of John Carpenter’s CHRISTINE (1983), a Stephen King-like demonic car possession effect, where car alarms are simultaneously triggered by some invisible sound, happening both in the wee hours of the night, yet also during a busy afternoon with plenty of bystanders apparently ignoring or oblivious to what they see. Jessica remains troubled by the same recurring sound, yet no one else can hear it, heard repeatedly while having dinner with Karen after her recovery, who seems to be suffering from short-term memory issues, as she doesn’t remember Jessica’s visits to the hospital, but does remember an ominous stray dog left to die on the street, taking it to the vet, but then she never returned. Jessica is having existential issues at the table, as the ominous sound is momentarily disorienting, altering her own perception of reality, while her sister seems to be having issues of her own, warned against returning to the indigenous tribes involved with her work, referred to as “The Invisible People,” as they send out their elders every night to perform a ritual to bring harm to anyone who attempts to contact them, fearing it may be having an effect on her, as she now believes she may be cursed. Jessica visits a recommended audio engineer who also works as a musical sound mixer at the National University, Hernán (Juan Pablo Urrego), seen at his working studio, with Jessica awkwardly trying to verbally approximate what she hears, sounding like a big ball of concrete falling into a well surrounded by sea water, yet more metallic, or more like a rumble from the core of the earth, MEMORIA Film Clip - Jessica describes the sound YouTube (1:48). He chooses from an online library of sounds, reproducing various options, as she attempts to narrow it down to the sound she finds familiar, having little success initially, but the engineer keeps trying, at one point out of the blue asking her, “Have you been to Tokyo?” More amusing than it seems, he also claims he might use it in his band, which he calls The Depths of Delusion Ensemble, drawing a wry smile. This sequence has echoes of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), where Gene Hackman struggles to isolate an elusive sound in a crowd of voices, but here the mystery is more deep-rooted in human consciousness. Later he meets her outside, giving her headphones while playing a sample of his band’s work, which is not shared with viewers, yet there’s an exquisite sequence of dancers in the plaza. When she returns to look for him, he’s no longer there, and musicians rehearsing in the building have never heard of him. Wandering through the rehearsal studios, with nearly all the doors closed, she comes across one where sound can be heard emanating through the hallway, wandering into the doorway entrance, with viewers enchanted by what may be the most intoxicating moment of the film, a piano and percussion-heavy band playing in a room filled with captivated listeners, producing what is described as “new music” that is simply enthralling, Memoria (2021) jazz session YouTube (3:38), where it’s nearly impossible to believe this is happening in a Weerasethakul film, which has never set foot in an urban metropolis before. While the film was shot on 35mm for the first time since SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (2006), growing more exquisitely luxurious in the latter half of the film, the sensory richness of the sound captures even the tiniest details and is truly remarkable, yet the sound was recorded and mixed digitally, with a musical score written by César López. Easily the most humorous sequence happens when Jessica visits a stern female doctor (Constanza Gutierrez) in Bogotá, with the city and mountains seen out the window behind her, who questions her about her mental health after hearing she never sleeps, a condition she finds deeply destabilizing, and may be in search of a sedative, questioning her about what she hears, telling her, “In this town there are a lot of people who have hallucinations.” Swinton is a stand-in for the director, as this sequence is likely a variation on an autobiographical experience of the director, who acknowledges that he previously suffered from Exploding Head Syndrome [EHS], a sensory condition in which people hear loud noises in their sleep. While this doctor immediately jumps to the conclusion the patient is interested in acquiring Xanax, an addictive drug, she lists some of the side effects as potential dangers, such as losing the exuberance of joy or the pain of sadness, and the ability to savor the beauty of the world, handing her instead a religious pamphlet on Jesus Christ, asking her to read it, while also recommending a Salvador Dalí painting hanging in the lobby. It’s only later on in the film that we learn the doctor did give her some medicine, but the nature of what it is remains unknown, yet it’s all part of her search for the truth behind this foreboding sound.
Presumably on a work visit, Jessica travels into the countryside of Pijao from the Quindío region, a remote area of the mountains and forests, still re-experiencing the sounds as she’s exploring a stream, yet listening intently, when a man watching her offscreen asks if she’s all right. So she wanders over to him and the two commence to share intimate secrets as if they were long lost friends, the kind of thing that only happens in cinema, not really a part of poetry or literature, yet it frequently happens in cinema. Underscoring themes of collective memory and dealing with the historical past, Weerasethakul’s world frequently reveals intersecting pasts, presents, and futures. Like most of his films, this is another ghost story, with Colombia, specifically the Quindío region, serving as a gateway between the civilizations of North and South America, where mountainous regions apparently remind the director of the place where he lived as a young child in northeastern Thailand, with people on opposite sides of the globe believing in ghosts. The film turns into Carlos Reygadas territory (another person thanked in the end credits), particularly his early film JAPÓN (2002) that veers into the peyote visions of Carlos Castañeda, where the wind in the leaves provides its own language, as this older man is also named Hernán (Elkin Díaz), seen scaling fish by the side of the stream. He lives a very secluded life, having never left his village, yet remembers every detail of what happens every day, including all that has happened in his lifetime. More than that, Hernán can hear the voices of people who lived and died ages ago in inanimate objects, like collected rocks nearby. Picking up a pebble, he describes the story of a young man who was beaten up by a group of other men, suggesting the small stone contains the memory, something explored in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (2017). As a result, he has no wish to live elsewhere, preferring his remote, isolated environment near the forest with no outside contact, no TV or radio, interacting with few people. When she suggests he may be missing out on soccer games, music, or news events, he only shakes his head, “I try to limit what I see,” he says. “Experiences are harmful.” He appears to have an instant connection with Jessica, inviting her to drink a homemade brew, but he seems to not only be a part of the land, but a part of its ancient history, like an indigenous seer or prophet, a medium that is able to connect between different times. As a white European who speaks the languages of the two colonizing powers in the Americas, Jessica is a curious figure, down-to-earth and accessible, yet unremarkable in her beige shirts, jeans, and sneakers, truly a stranger in a strange land, yet she’s not out of her element. As timelines and memories converge, the director takes great interest in demonstrating how Colombia has moved away from its supernatural, indigenous roots to become a modern country, using Tilda Swinton as a European-born white woman traversing through that foreign ground, becoming consumed by the echoed ghosts of a lost culture, feeling completely disconnected, no longer within one’s own body, reflecting a unique form of solitude. Hernán describes himself as a hard disk, and when Jessica begins to channel words and sounds from his past that she at first thinks are her own memories, even breaking down into tears, he tells her she is an antenna reaching into his own consciousness, at one point asking “Why are you crying? These aren’t your memories.” Memoria (2021) - Why are you crying? They are not your memories. YouTube (6:05). Never particularly one for exposition, the filmmaker, who routinely writes his own material, prefers his audiences to immerse themselves in the sensory and dreamlike experiences that he creates, perhaps best expressed by Cemetery of Splendor (Rak ti Khon Kaen) (2015), yet the director has never felt so directly purposeful before, with each distinct shot, each sequence contributing to the whole, where the sum of all the parts contribute to a largesse of metaphysical complexities and reference points. Boldly paying tribute to Latin American magic realism, a recurring element in many of his films, yet rooted in our waking consciousness, this film takes us back to primordial times, exploring how it all began, contemplating the collective memories of all who passed through here, both the living and the dead, becoming a meditation on interconnectedness, yet the most mysterious sound of this film, seemingly emerging from the center of the earth, is depicted in a surreal sci-fi moment as something metaphorically otherworldly and alien, that stands in stark contrast to the natural sounds emanating throughout this film, with a camera fixed on the mountains, the passing clouds, and the sky, images that reflect a transporting and transcendent experience.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tilda Swinton on Memoria | NYFF59 YouTube (41:10)
