A Journey into Mind and Memory
Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethekul
From watching earlier films of this notorious Thai filmmaker like Blissfully Yours (2002), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and Cemetary of Splendour (2015), I’ve learned not to occupy myself with trying to grasp a conventional story-line. Rather, I prepare myself for entering and settling into an experience, a bit like entering into a dream. And yes, the more so with his latest movie, the winner of the Grand Jury Award in Cannes 2021 Memoria!
Memoria is a film that should be seen on the big screen. This is in line with the intention of its distributor who chose to roll out the film in a non-typical manner, moving from one local theater to another other one week at a time, and to wait with releasing it to streaming or dvd. It is meant to be an event, which you have to plan and prepare for. It is not a film that should be entered unprepared, casually scanning the weekly schedule in search of entertainment.
Weerasethekul does not aspire to help you to understand why one segment of the film is followed by the next. He leaves that to you to interpret. He lets you dream away during long shots that make you see things you normally may not observe. It is like an exercise in mindfulness – stay where you are and keep looking and looking, seeking a thread to connect seemingly unconnected bits and pieces.
If you anyway try to pick up a storyline, it is about a Scottish woman, an expatriate in Colombia, who visits her sister in Bogota. One morning she wakes up to a particular sound that she describes as ‘a ball of concrete hitting a metal wall, surrounded by seawater’. This sounds keeps haunting her. She hears it at unexpected moments in unexpected places. No one else seems to hear it. She visits a sound studio to ask for help to reshape the sound. Although, when she later goes back to the studio, they have never heard of the fellow who helped her. So, we don’t know if it was in her dreams or in reality this recreating happened. Her pursuit of the sound leads her to places and people who in different ways contribute to her journey.
Tilda Swinton is magnificent in her role as the Scottish woman. The confusion, the pain of memories, the memory lapses, the possibly traumatic experience underlying this obsessive search – it is all in her face and in her complete being. Nobody knows if it is reality or just a dream. She has a sound in her head that she can’t really identify, but one that seems very significant. If we get an answer at all from Weerasethekul, it is an answer that raises many new questions.
What a transcendent experience to be completely drawn into a film, not thinking of anything else, just concentrating on its slow, enigmatic scenes, while not being even nearly able to put the pieces together and form conclusions!
August 2022/Rinus
*image posted under fair use of copyright material in recommendation of the film
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The other day we had the chance to see with Rinus and Joke the film Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethekul. As our friend mentions in his post, this is not a film that serves up an easy-made recipe. To enter this film requires some serious attention and reflection. The film deliberately avoids what is obvious and offers a smattering of transcendental moments that coexist with other apparently quotidian scenes that are less directly relevant to the matter at hand, yet as present as daily life.
As we reflected on this film, the meaning of the story was not entirely clear to us. So we gave some effort to thinking it through further. We had a sense that it might involve memories of a long-forgotten past, or a mission that was both urgent and unknown. Our time of discussion was both entertaining and, hopefully, rather insightful. It was a marvelous conclusion to a peculiar series of images.
Yet maybe our efforts at deciphering the key to this story were not the most important part of the experience. I felt that the most enriching, impacting and inspiring part was the resolute effort of our friends to penetrate beyond what is evident, to see beyond the immediate, always with a very human, honest and kind eye. Maybe the meaning is not the essential part. Maybe, one might say that arriving in Ithaca was not the most important thing in Homer’s story either, as the famous poem by Cavafy suggests. So, we learned that the true gift was not the arrival but the journey, not the certainty but the open attitude of human empathy towards that which life and stories place before us. The honest attempt to understand, the vibrations of friendship sown through a heart-felt discussion, and the attitude of mental openness are undoubtedly the richest parts of that evening of friendship and film.
Alberto and Dan
El otro día tuvimos la oportunidad de ver, (¡con Rinus y Joke!), la película Memoria, de Apichatpong Weerasethekul.
Como advierte nuestro amigo en este post, no es una película que te lo ponga fácil. Para penetrar en ella es preciso un serio ejercicio de atención y reflexión, pues el autor ha huido deliberadamente de lo obvio y siembra su historia de momentos transcendentes que conviven junto a otros que parecen cotidianos, menos relevantes para el asunto, pero tan presentes como lo están en la vida cotidiana.
Tras el visionado, el significado de la historia no parece absolutamente claro. Habrá que insistir. Ver si se trata, como intuimos, de la llamada de un pasado muy olvidado, o de una misión a la vez urgente y desconocida. Nuestra puesta en común, divertida y esperemos que algo atinada, fue un estupendo cierre para una muy peculiar secuencia de imágenes.
Pero creo que el tratar de acercarnos a su clave no fue quizás la parte más enriquecedora de nuestra experiencia. Creo que lo más notable, lo más impactante e inspirador es la tenaz actitud de nuestros anfitriones para penetrar más allá de lo evidente, para ver más lejos de lo inmediato, siempre con una mirada humana, limpia y bondadosa. Quizás el significado no sea tan importante, quizás llegar a Ítaca no sea lo esencial.
Con ellos hemos aprendido que el verdadero regalo no es la llegada, sino el viaje, no el acertar sino la actitud abierta, empática, humana ante aquello que la vida y las historias nos ponen por delante. El intento honesto de comprender, las vibraciones de la amistad tejidas al hilo de los comentarios, la actitud de apertura mental son sin duda lo más enriquecedor que nos llevamos de esta tarde de paseos, amigos y películas.
Alberto y Daniel
Thanks Rinus, Dan and Alberto for sharing your interaction over the film. I appreciate you letting us into your ponderings as well as the opportunity it gave you to connect more deeply.
I wholeheartedly agree with your perspective. The deepest effects are not in our right conclusions but how we get rightly positioned towards life and one another.