Memoria

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria starts with a sonic sensation, a “bang” that wakes up Tilda Swinton’s Jessica Holland. The noise propels her body and thus the narrative, inasmuch as it sets the viewer’s trajectory onto the realms of sound. In other words, the film becomes all about sound; about hearing, listening and feeling; about the whole notions of the smallest details the sound can produce, which we, the viewers-listeners, microdose along with the screening.

In Memoria - the story is driven by a memory of a sound and Jessica’s search to find the source of this sound. The thump which only she can hear while walking, or having a meal with her family - can you imagine how it would feel the disquiet of a weird sound which only you can hear. The first thought would be that it is a dream but that we don’t dream while eating. 

She tries to recreate the sound in a sound studio & then that person disappears (no answer given in the movie) & exasperated she tells her friend - she is going mad. Not able to sleep, she wanders on the outskirts of the city where she meets someone who is like a shaman (in jeans & shirt) who can help her see the dream / go back in time and connect with the sound. And there is a spacecraft which flies off - Was that the source of sound? Maybe. Left to interpretation. It got the Cannes Critics award.

The movie has an extremely slow pace and shots are almost like still shots so the camera will focus on a particular person for 3 minutes while a jazz ensemble is playing in the background. Similarly on sound it is all real sound of forest & birds & trees - for this reason the movie was shot in Columbia. 

I came out feeling lost and only after hearing the interviews & podcasts could make some sense of it. I could then empathize with what Jessica was going through. I have gone through this phase of carrying something on my head or in my dream or suddenly awakened but not able to describe the sensation. For me it was disturbing and the sensation it created could not be described in words for anybody else - so you stay quiet & pass it off as insomnia. Which is what she does. 

You have to be in the character's mind to really appreciate such movies. Many of the movies in MUBI which have world movies (in all possible languages) I come out wondering what it’s all about. You will have to  

Postscript: Next on my list.

In the recent Fahadh Faasil-starrer Malayankunju, set against the calamitous landslides across Kerala in 2019, the full force of the natural disaster is felt like a violent jolt. We hear nothing for a few seconds before and after Faasil’s house comes crashing down. Sound, both the presence and absence of it, plays one of the key role in the movie.

In one of our movie discussions Jai Arjun Singh who conducts these sessions said “If you are seeing Malaykunju, see it when the room is dark, don’t see it on phone, see it on a large screen with a good sound system or with headphones otherwise don’t see it. He was emphatic about it as always”