Memo­ria – first-look review

Apichat­pong Weerasethakul’s films are about the calm after the storm. In films like Uncle Boon­mee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and Ceme­tery of Splen­dour, room tone and the rus­tle of the nat­ur­al world seem to hum with the after­ef­fects of war, migra­tion and oth­er trau­ma – the bor­der between present and past is porous, if you let your­self set­tle into the becalmed tone and sleepy mood of his scenes, and tune into the vibrations.

The idea of being attuned to the vibra­tions of the past, of oth­er times and oth­er lives, becomes lit­er­al in Memo­ria, the director’s first fea­ture film made out­side of his native Thai­land, in this case in Colom­bia, a coun­try with its own embed­ded his­to­ry of vio­lence and lush jun­gle bio­me. Like the best of his work, Memo­ria lulls you into its rhythms, gives you the sparse out­lines of an intel­lec­tu­al frame­work, then hits you with the full weight of accu­mu­lat­ed lyri­cism that must be pure cinema.

The film opens with Jes­si­ca (Til­da Swin­ton), a British woman in South Amer­i­ca, pos­si­bly griev­ing and pos­si­bly start­ing an orchid farm, awok­en in the night by a sound. It‘s like an explo­sion, not so dif­fer­ent from the back­fir­ing bus that sends a pedes­tri­an div­ing to the ground in the mid­dle of a cross­walk, but not quite. And how odd: no one else can hear the sound, though in her encoun­ters at the uni­ver­si­ty where she’s research­ing bac­te­ria and fun­gus, and at the hos­pi­tal where she’s vis­it­ing a patient in and out of con­scious­ness, there are oth­er traces of things below the sur­face. Sol­diers guard the road into the moun­tains; a chance encounter with an archae­ol­o­gist reveals a trove of bones still car­ry­ing the wounds of six thou­sand years pri­or; car alarms ring shril­ly, agi­tat­ed by an obscure stimulus.

The sound that plagues Jes­si­ca is like a con­crete orb dropped into a met­al cylin­der full of sea­wa­ter, as she explains to Her­nan (Juan Pablo Urrego), a sound engi­neer help­ing her dig­i­tal­ly engi­neer a recre­ation of her… mem­o­ry? Hal­lu­ci­na­tion? The scene, in both its slow, almost sleepy, med­i­ta­tive pace and attempt to aural­ly evoke an absence, seems a reflec­tion on Apichatpong’s own film­mak­ing. They’re doing sound design, try­ing to con­jure the noise that haunts her – and it’s sure­ly sig­nif­i­cant that Her­nan uses a stock library of audio effects that includes sounds like a wood­en bat hit­ting a duvet over a human tor­so. This is a film shot in a South Amer­i­can coun­try in tur­moil, after all.

Swin­ton, who has been on the Riv­iera for basi­cal­ly the dura­tion of Cannes, see­ing more movies than any oth­er celebri­ty, and must sure­ly be in line to be the next native Eng­lish speak­er to be Pres­i­dent of the Palme d’Or jury, is won­der­ful – phys­i­cal­ly care­ful and intel­lec­tu­al­ly present – in Memo­ria as a woman car­ry­ing a secret sad­ness which is not mere­ly her own.

Trav­el­ing out of the city, she meets anoth­er Her­nan (Elkin Diaz), a peas­ant with a per­fect mem­o­ry and a gift for audio, a mys­ti­cal abil­i­ty to recall and con­nect to the vibra­tions of the past, to pick up a rock and feel a his­to­ry going back, as in The Tree of Life, to the misty ori­gins of life on Earth. Apichatpong’s already delib­er­ate pac­ing, which is med­i­ta­tive, in the sense of con­scious­ly slow­ing your thoughts in order to bet­ter seek tran­scen­dence, reach­es its pow­er­ful­ly res­o­nant peak in extend­ed long takes of a man lying on his back, bare­ly breath­ing, not even dream­ing (no thoughts, just vibes), and a deeply mov­ing scene in which Diaz and Swin­ton clasp hands, and a rush of non-diegetic sound – nature, dia­logue, mem­o­ries – flow through the sound­track and through her.

Apichat­pong is on the record as say­ing that he doesn’t mind if you doze off at his movies; by now, I’ve been at the 2021 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val for as long as I can remem­ber, and I will raise my hand and say that I’m pret­ty sure that the part of this sequence where I heard my own par­ents’ voic­es was not part of the movie. But then again… wasn’t it?