You’re out of luck if you thought the casting of Tilda Swinton and the inclusion of dialogue in English would make Memoria, the latest from enigmatic Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, less mesmerizingly inscrutable. The movie, in which Swinton plays a Scottish woman in Colombia who is haunted by a randomly occurring sonic boom that only she can hear, offers few tangible answers as to its overall meaning or central mystery (the haunting boom is something of the movie’s 2001-like monolith). There are clues: a subplot involving ancient skeletons excavated from a construction site; musical interludes (one of which incorporates the mysterious sound); and a climactic encounter with a man (Elkin Diaz) who claims he can vividly remember everything that ever happened to him. And so, this could be a meditation on the thudding reality of mortality, with the strange sound serving as the ticking of a doomsday clock; an encouragement to musically embrace death as an opportunity for rebirth; or, as the title suggests, an exploration of memory as a way to transcend space and time. Oh, and maybe aliens, but I won’t spoil that. Weerasethakul casts spells, and this is a particularly auditory one, the weaving of a liminal soundspace. If visually Memoria is a bit less engrossing than previous Weerasethakul features such as Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives or Cemetery of Splendor (the oppressive jungle rain makes for a somewhat dismal mis en scene), the compositions within the frame are nevertheless extraordinary and Swinton is riveting at the center of them. She’s a master of cinematic stillness, and Memoria asks us, above all else, to be still.
(10/21/2021)
