Memoria review: Tilda Swinton delivers a sonic mystery with powerhouse finesse

Written and directed by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Memoria is streaming on MUBI

Tilda Swinton in Memoria

Memoria

STORY: Alarmed by an eerily loud boom that she keeps hearing from time to time, a middle-aged woman seeks out to decipher the noise and mystery behind it.   

REVIEW: “A rumble from the core of the earth” is how Scottish-born orchidologist Jessica Holland (Tilda Swinton) - who now stays in Medellín, Colombia - describes the loud blunt thud that jolted her awake early morning one day. This also happens to be the opening scene of Thai writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s dizzily profound piece of cinema, called Memoria. What she initially thought was some sort of a noise from a construction site nearby turned out to be something that only she hears.

Still trying to unravel the source of the noise, a visibly disturbed Jessica visits her sister Karen Holland (Agnes Brekke) in the hospital, who seems to be recovering from an undisclosed illness. Later, she even shares her agony with her brother-in-law Juan Ospina (Daniel Giménez Cacho), who further confirms that there is no construction work going near her place. 

After she hears the same noise a couple of times again, Jesscica decides to go and meet a sound engineer to decipher what the clamour is about. It’s similar to a “big ball of concrete falling into a metal well, surrounded by seawater”, is what she told Hernán Bedoya (Juan Pablo Urrego), as they sat down in his sound recording studio. Following a brief chat with her, Hernán re-creates the pitch, echo and timbre of the sound, responding to which she says, “Yes, there it is. I am very touched by your interpretation”. Apparently, that’s precisely the noise she keeps hearing. But what is it?  

After the first meet-up, her acquaintance with him deepens. On the day Hernán hands over a recorded version of the sound that she keeps hearing, the sound engineer tells her that he’s also part of an electronic punk music band, called the Depth of Delusion Ensemble, and that someday he wants to go to Tokyo and perform there. Shockingly though, a few days later when she goes back to his workplace looking for him, the other people who work there inform her that there’s never been anybody named Hernán who was employed there. So, is Jessica hallucinating about what she is seeing or hearing?

Meanwhile, she accidentally gets a chance to visit the osteology department in the hospital where Karen is admitted, and she takes keen interest in understanding the old bones that are being studied. Maybe, she’s trying to figure out if there is something from the past that’s haunting her. 

Riddled by anxiety and insomnia in the wake of the sonic boom, she finally pays a visit to Dr Constanza (Constanza Gutiérrez), who refused to give her Xanax and instead handed her a pamphlet with attributes of god. The maker adopts a mysterious yet calmly realistic narrative technique to loosely divide the plot in three parts, with one gradually slipping away from the other.  

In an effort to unsnarl her own muddled views, Jesscica now finds herself near a brook, reaching out to hear what she probably thinks could serve as a clue. That’s when she meets another Hernán Bedoya (Elkin Díaz), an older man who never left the small town. He scales fish sitting by the brook, and lives alone in a house full of pleasant and evocative memories. 

Just like a piece of memory breaching its seams, Memoria cuts across time and people to delve deeper into the past and the present; those that are earthbound and the extraterrestrial. One of the greatest movies ever made, Memoria is more than a slow-burning relic. Apichatpong maintains a clear gaze throughout the movie, as Tilda puts up a powerful portrait that is baffling and poignant at once. 

The director seems to deliberately use long shots that are sometimes unusually lengthy and mundane. It’s only much later in the film that you get to see a close-up shot of Jessica. He patiently navigates the protagonist’s psyche, delicately perforating her thoughts and the noise that’s troubling her. The scene where she sits in the middle of an open field at night with a stray dog roaming around her, as she constantly hears the tumultuous noise, deserves a special mention. The conversations she has with both the younger and older Hernán are definitely the turning points of her life. The curious use of open windows, lingering radio transmissions, rain sound effects and a muted colour palette as plot devices are intriguing too. Dabbling in fantasy, hyperrealism, history and identity, Memoria is a metaphysical mystery that captivates you for a good 136 minutes.

VERDICT: A must-watch if you have a leaning toward abstract narratives that claim a deeper understanding of the living and the dead. Tilda delivers a compelling performance, as she intricately depicts a rather surreal and impressionistic character with powerhouse finesse. Apichatpong’s Spanish film Memoria is definitely a movie to be remembered.

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Tilda Swinton

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