What makes a movie Schlub Cinema? Is it the bags beneath a lead character’s eyes? A cast of alcoholics, debtors, and gamblers? The bowling alleys and dive bars? To all of that I’d say yes. However, there was an aspect that I had not considered until I sat down last Saturday to watch Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s new film Memoria – one of the most compelling theater experiences of my life.
The director of 2010’s acclaimed hallucinogenic ghost story Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Weerasethakul’s new film deals with ghosts in another form – sound. Marking the Thai director’s first English-language film, Memoria is predominantly a soundscape. Just as with Uncle Boonmee, the slim plot is really just a vessel for mood. Jessica (Tilda Swinton) is a Scottish orchid farmer living in Bogotá, Colombia. She spends her days reading over germination textbooks, meandering university buildings, and visiting her ill sister in the hospital. Yet, one morning she is awoken by a noise only she can hear – a deafening bang.
Jessica fits the visual mode of a Schlub – she’s bleary, carrying herself with a hollowed stoop. The bang appears to be random and the film moves for long stretches before it reappears, but as Jessica shambles through the streets of Bogotá with eyes that barely open, it’s clear the sound has reappeared off screen and through her sleepless nights. But what’s more Schlubby about Memoria is its level of tactility – especially with sound.
Although it feels strange to make the comparison, there is an ASMR quality to Memoria that I’ve never seen in a film before. Without the use of a score, each sound is thunderous in the silence. Heavy rain falling on concrete sidewalks. Howler monkeys fighting for dominance, unseen within the jungle. Each creak in the chair as Tilda awkwardly tries to relax. The scrape of a man’s nails across a fish’s slippery side. These are all amplified more by the fact that Weerasethakul uses static long takes to tell this story – some lasting more than fifteen minutes in length. Combined with the minimalist dialogue, our eyes and ears focus on every inch of the screen and the minute decisions that each actor makes. Regarding his upcoming Avatar sequels, James Cameron described his use of high frame rate cameras as looking through a window without the glass – a complete elimination of the suspension of disbelief for moviegoers.1 However, Weerasethakul’s hypnotic cinema has beaten Cameron to the punch without any of the tech. These slow, play-like scenes lull the audience into the frame – allowing us to see his characters as real people inhabiting a space, rather than actors reciting lines.
As with Uncle Boonmee, Memoria is a ghost story. Unlike Uncle Boonmee, who’s ape spirits arrive within the opening minutes, Memoria takes its time to reveal its otherworldly secrets. Weerasethakul provides no clear cause until the final minutes for the deafening bang heard within Jessica’s head at the film’s start. Between those 136 minutes the bang appears unprovoked – keeping the audience in a constant state of anticipation and worry. At first, Jessica treats the sound like a curiosity. In one of the most impressive scenes in the film, Jessica meets a sound engineer named Hernán (Juan Pablo Urrego) who attempts to recreate the bang in his professional studio. We watch while Jessica attempts the impossible task of describing a sound. “It’s like … a big ball of concrete … that falls into a metal well … which is surrounded by seawater,” she explains. Hernán tweaks and tweaks the audio until finally he recreates the bang on his software. The noise reverberates through the room - and what was once a curiosity for Jessica now has become distressingly real. She is despondent while the noise in her head is played out of speakers in the real world.
This sense of dread continues both formally and narratively. Weerasethakul often begins his scenes with a wide establishing shot of the location – leaving the viewer to not only find the characters within the crowded marketplaces or coiled jungles, but to find the meaning in each event. Lights turn off as Jessica wanders the university buildings. A dog pads along behind her for blocks on end. The bang even returns louder and more frequently than ever as Jessica’s sister explains how the indigenous peoples of the Amazon are casting spells to keep out loggers. Nothing is neatly explained – so it’s up to the audience to decide the significance for themselves.
“Xanax takes away life’s beauty,” a doctor explains to a desperate Jessica, “and life’s sadness.” This beauty is Memoria’s secret supernatural weapon, and I’m not just talking about the awe-inspiring shots of the jungle or the cityscapes of Bogotá. This beauty comes in unexpected forms. Jessica reads about various causes of decay and rot within orchid flowers throughout the film – but this decay is treated more like a transition from one form of life into another, rather than a disease that needs to be cured. Bogotá itself seems to be in a similar transition. Faded concrete structures have become covered in flowering vines and intricate graffiti, while the pristine woodwork buildings of the university stand empty for echoes to quietly pass through.
Towards the end of the film, Jessica meets a fisherman (Elkin Díaz) living deep within the lush countryside. Throughout their winding conversation, the discussion turns to sound. The man claims that he can hear memories. The earth does not forget the sounds of what happens upon it – even the tiniest rock holds them like a cassette. Are these ghosts or just memories? Is there really a difference?
In a bold move befitting a time of strange COVID release schedules, Memoria will never be available to stream or own on physical media. Instead, the film has been traveling from city to city across the US, playing in art houses for a week at a time. Although I have issues with this strategy in regards to accessibility, I understand why he would make this decision after seeing it in the absolute silence of the theater. All of us at that noon screening were experiencing a memory together.
Memoria will not be for everyone, but everyone should make time to see it before it fades away back into the earth.
Memoria is playing in select theaters across the country.
Special thanks to Austin Smoldt-Sáenz, Elena Bruess, Joshua De Lanoit, and Max Seifert.
Movies have traditionally been filmed and projected at 24 frames per second. This is the regular and accepted “movie look” that we’re all used to. Filming and projecting a movie at 48 or 60 frames per minute is supposed to give a smoother and more realistic picture. However, this has often resulted in giving an unnatural and off-putting look akin to a daytime soap opera or live sporting event.