FILM ANALYSIS IN 10 SLIDES
Enigmatic Realm of Sound: Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s MEMORIA (2021)
On MUBI in December 2024
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AWARDS
Memoria won the Jury prize at Cannes Film Festival and the Gold Hugo at Chicago International Film Festival.
PLOT SUMMARY
Jessica (Tilda Swinton), an orchid farmer from Scotland on a visit to see her ailing sister in Bogotá, Colombia, wakes up one morning to a loud boom. Others don’t seem to hear the ‘bang” which she keeps hearing, preventing her from sleeping. A young sound engineer named Hernán (Juan Pablo Urrego) recreates the sound for Jessica. But on a subsequent visit to his studio, she learns that there is no such person by name Hernán.
In her quest to find the source of the sound, Jessica meets the middle-aged fish scaler Hernán (Elkin Díaz) in the countryside. She connects to the “hard disk” Hernán like an antenna and taps into his memories which go back to the distant past, the “bang’ being part of it. At last, she comes to know the source which created the sound.
STRUCTURE
From the plot summary one can make out that the film doesn’t lend itself to understanding what is its denotative meaning, forcing the viewers to figure out the connotative meaning. Knowledge of Weerasethakul’s earlier films will help to a certain extent although the director has made a departure with Memoria by moving out of his country Thailand and setting the film in Colombia. The structure is that of a search for finding the source of the “bang” that Jessica hears. The Latin meaning of the title is memory which works at multiple levels: individual memory, shared memory with the other, history of the land and history of mankind. While the archeological finding and the origin of the “bang” are shown visually, the collage of diverse kinds of memory are mostly evoked by the use of sound.
TROPICAL MALADY (2004)
Winner of the Jury prize at Cannes Film festival in 2004, this film has a two-part structure. In the first, Keng (Banlop Lomnoi), a soldier stationed in a Thai village has a passionate relationship with a village boy Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee) which ends with his disappearance. In the surreal second part, the soldier Keng goes into the jungle to kill the spirit of a tiger shaman. Its human form turns out to be Tong who beats him up and pushes him down the hill. In the end Keng has to face the shape-shifting shaman as a tiger. While the film’s theme isn’t among Weerasethakul’s recurring themes found in Memoria, the common aspect of the two films is that both have mesmerizing mysteries that are open to several interpretations.
UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Inspired by the book “A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives” (1983) by Buddhist abbot Phra Sripariyattiweti, the film covers the evening of life of Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) suffering from kidney disease and his subsequent death. The ghost of his wife Huay (Natthakarn Aphaiwong) appears and offers him guidance for his afterlife. Boonmee’s long lost son Boosong (Jeerasak Kulhong) also appears as a hairy jungle creature. The film is shot in various styles, throwing in a period scene of a princess having intercourse with a catfish. With family members around, Boonmee recollects his previous lives and attributes his illness to karma caused by his killing of communists. Memory, brutal history of the land and mystery are the aspects of the film that recur in Memoria.
CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR (2015)
Cemetery of Splendour is about a group of soldiers afflicted with a mysterious sleeping sickness. They are moved to a temporary clinic in a school. Colored lights are kept beside each bed to soothe the soldiers troubled by dreams. Housewife and volunteer Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas) attends to one of the soldiers Itt (Banlop Lomnoi) who has no family visitors. She gets friendly with Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), a young woman with psychic powers, who helps loved ones communicate with the men in sleep. In Memoria also the theme of psychic power is taken up. The ancient site, buried under the clinic in the film, recurs in Memoria too. The site has a cemetery of ancient kings who are fighting in a secret world, draining the energy of the soldiers. The image of an excavator digging up the earth is also in Memoria.
IN THE REALM OF SOUND
Central to Memoria is the notion of sound evoking personal, shared, historical and cosmic memory. Weerasethakul has said that the “bang” heard by Jessica in the film is based on his own experience of the exploding head syndrome he was beset with. Later in the film Jessica comes to know from the middle-aged Hernán that it comes from the past. Perhaps Hernán transmits it to others. Apart from Jessica, a man in the street who falls down, a bird which reacts to it and the parked cars setting off the alarm seem to receive it too. It’s a brilliant idea to recreate the “bang” just like creating a picture of a criminal from the description of witnesses. Perhaps the young Hernán, connected with his namesake, is in a coexisting world which others can’t see.
BORGESIAN MEMORY
The infinite memory of the fish scaler Hernán appears to have been inspired by the short story “Funes the Memorious” by Jorge Luis Borges. In Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Weerasethakul draws from the Buddhist notion of reincarnation. Since Memoria is set in Latin America, perhaps he took to Borges.
In the Borges story, “Funes was a precursor of the race of supermen — “a maverick and vernacular Zarathustra””. In Memoria Hernán and his community appear to be like supermen who don’t dream. Hernán demonstrates his deathlike sleep to Jessica. She can tap into his memory which reveals the possibility of shared memory creating empathy among humans. Holding his hand, she hears the sounds from the past upto the “bang”. The origin of the “bang” — the spaceship — evokes an epiphany of our cosmic connection.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Tilda Swinton has come up with the right facial expressions and body language in the role of Jessica. Surprisingly she hasn’t got an award for her excellent performance. The sound designer Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr is yet another star in the film which is full of diverse sounds including its signature sound of the “bang”.
Memoria is an enigmatic film which invites multiple interpretations. Even though the film is puzzling, it works very well at the experiential level. It gives primary importance to sound; however, it also has memorable imagery such as the alarm setting off in the cars. It is an audacious film that makes a giant leap to express the personal, the political and the cosmic in a poetic style. Memoria could arguably be the best film of 2021 and it could also be among the top 10 films of the millennium.
