Memoria (2021)

The 1.85:1 aspect ration foregrounds the background of Memoria

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria concerns a Scottish woman named Jessica Holland (Tilda Swinton) who, when visiting an ailing sister in Colombia, begins to experience auditory hallucinations. As in his previous features, Mr. Weerasethakul (who I will henceforth refer to by his nickname, Joe) is not particularly concerned with plot, per se. Rather, his cinema is an immersive one where Joe seeks to evoke the psycho-environmental states of his protagonists. This lands Joe's work in the realm of art cinema. Indeed, one of the more provocative threads of the film is the varieties of art Jessica encounters: installations, statues, painting, music. There is much to sift through in this film. Still, if you are a cinemagoer attached to storytelling, it might be best to steer clear of Memoria.

The film is a meditation on individual and collective memory. I just lambasted The Batman for its slow pace, but Memoria is a film that benefits from its deliberately sluggish rhythms. Most shots in the film are long takes that are framed at a distinct distance from the characters. Narrative momentum is sacrificed for a serene contemplation of man in his natural and unnatural habitats. Sound is equally as important as image in the film. A prologue, which contains Joe's design sketches for the film, is completely silent. This serves to emphasize the disjunctive nature of Jessica's auditory hallucinations. Sounds trigger both positive and negative emotional responses from people in Memoria: a bus backfiring, a jazz quartet jamming, fish scales being grated. 

Do these auditory triggers prompt an individual response or one from a collective unconscious? I feel that Joe's response would be "yes"; indicative of a refutation of an either/or schism. Memoria has many threads to be pulled that lurk below its surface whereas a film like The Batman is all surface. Memoria pictures how memory, the outline of a past that leaves traces for the future, imprints itself upon all sorts of matter: wood, rock, and, especially, the brain. 

Jessica's auditory episodes and her sister's illness continue the theme of sickness in Joe's work. Heretofore, these seemed to be particularly modern malaises in his films. In Memoria, Joe traces the roots of sickness to a more cosmic origin. (Attention: Major Spoiler Alert!) I felt that the introduction of an extraterrestrial presence slightly cheapened the film. I prefer the relative ambiguity of Uncle Boonmee... or Cemetery of Splendor to Memoria. I think that Tilda Swinton's lack of vulnerability, she is always an imperious presence, worked against the film. Still, I would urge those who value questing spirits in the cinema to see Memoria in a theater. Joe's cinema is both beguiling and enervating, but it is wholly singular.