Review: 'Memoria' (Apichatpong Weerasethakul 2021)

MEMORIA - screened at the 2021 QCinema.

By Stephanie Mayo

Winner of the Jury Prize at the 74th Cannes International Film Festival, Memoria is Apichatpong Weerasethakul's first film outside of his native Thailand, and his first in the English language. The 136-minute film can be testing for its glacial speed, yet the atmospheric vibe stuck with me long after I left the cinema.

Academy Award-winner Tilda Swinton is Jessica, an expatriate in Colombia, whose life is suddenly disrupted by a ghostly sound. She alone can hear what she describes as “a ball of concrete hitting a metal wall surrounded by seawater” and “a rumble from the core of the Earth.”

The esoteric arthouse film is nearly plotless. Save for a mysterious man, Hernan, and the mystery of the sound of the “ball” that strikes at the most unexpected moments, Memoria is more of an experience than a vehicle for storytelling.

But it hooks you: Is Jessica suffering from a mental breakdown? Is the scary sound a symptom of a pathological condition? Have the 6,000-year-old human bones found in a tunnel construction got something to do with the otherworldly sound?

Weerasethakul provides a foreshadowing of the true source of the “ball” sound, when, in an earlier scene, he captures a bus careening with an exhaust bang. It comes full circle at the end of the movie.

The long, contemplative shots pull you into Memoria’s environment. Weerasethakul’s camera is often parked, fixed on a minimalist scene for a prolonged time, then broken by elements of shock and surprise. And each standalone scene is infused with sounds that trigger the characters’ memories and buried stories.

The surprise ending may or may not provide complete answers — but that’s precisely the beauty of this deeply immersive work of art. 

4/5 stars

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