There’s a calculated aimlessness to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, particularly in the way that the writer/director’s first film English and Spanish doesn’t employ a conventional narrative structure (there’s no rising action or climax, for example). Instead, as its title suggests, Memoria is intent on exploring memories and memorials and, in the process, (re)creating them as experiences for its audience.
The film follows Jessica (Tilda Swinton), an orchid farmer visiting her sick sister Karen (Agnes Brekke) in Bogotá, Colombia. The nature of the illness is uncertain – there’s speculation that it’s a curse from either an injured dog or due to her investigative work into a reclusive tribe in the Amazon – but, like much of the film, the truth goes unexplained or is cast aside as unimportant.
Jessica is also suffering from a mysterious affliction: at random times she hears a startlingly loud boom. Most intriguingly, she alone appears to hear it (at one point another man throws himself to the ground, but it is merely revealed that a bus has backfired). As Karen recuperates, Jessica decides to investigate the strange sound, which leads her to a series of encounters and experiences.
Sometimes these interactions pay off in the traditional narrative sense, such as when Jessica meets anthropologist Agnes Cerkinsky (Jeanne Balibar) in the hospital and then later visits her where the woman and her team are recovering 6,000-year-old remains.
More often than not, however, Jessica’s sojourns are entirely episodic. She investigates the purchase of an expensive storage unit for her orchid business. She follows a dog down the street after dark. She listens in rapt wonder as a band practices in the university’s music department. And all throughout, the mysterious noise sporadically, loudly, and unexpectedly sounds.
The quest to identify the origin and nature of the sound is Memoria’s most obvious narrative element. The film opens with Jessica being startled awake in the middle of the night, then she’s referred to Hernán (Juan Pablo Urrego), a sound engineer at the university who helps to recreate the aural disruption. Jessica struggles to put into words what she has been hearing (her closest approximation is a large concrete ball dropped down a metallic well into seawater) in a superb scene that simultaneously captures the limitation of language, and a fascinating glimpse into how movie sound effects are produced.
The fact that Jessica not only hears the recurring sound, but is also physically and emotionally affected by it speaks to Weerasethakul’s interest in lived experiences. The majority of the film seeks to replicate these experiences for the viewer, particularly in the strategic choice to film in long unedited takes, often with a static, unmoving camera. Shooting in this way forces the audience to sit through scenes, seeking out small details on the periphery while waiting and wondering if or when something will happen.
At times this encourages us to appreciate the beauty of the moment, such as near the end of the film when Jessica sits and drinks with a wise fish scaler (Elkin Diaz) living next to the river. At other times it is nearly excruciating, as cinematic training has conditioned viewers to impatiently demand speed and narrative progress.
Make no mistake, Weerasethakul’s deliberate, measured pace and lack of narrative urgency stand in stark contrast to the vast majority of Hollywood films. It is, however, perfectly suited to this slow, meditative film. From Agnes’ work uncovering the stories etched in bone to Jessica’s trips to art galleries, to the statues and fountains around the city, Memoria is a beautiful, occasionally emotional testament to telling, capturing and experiencing individual and collective memories.
It’s captivating, contemplative, and a tad frustrating, but for patient viewers, it’s worth the investment.
