Tilda Swinton has been having an astonishing few years. Since her breakthrough as the gender-nonspecific Orlando (1992, Sally Potter), she has been steadily busy, but, with 17 titles listed in IMDb just for 2020 through those still in post-production, this has to have been a frenzied period for one of our most accomplished actors. And two of those titles, The Human Voice and, now, Memoria, are projects built around her by a couple of the most prestigious directors in the business, Pedro Almodóvar and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, respectively - directors that many actors would kill for just to get cast in one of their productions. (Swinton is credited as executive producer of Memoria.)
All the more amazing, then, that she was able to slow down and enter the intense, time-nonspecific and, frankly, difficult world of Weerasethakul, the Thai director known as a master of the enigmatic long take. The cool understatement around which she has built her career serves her well here, and, through her presence and her commitment, she creates a level of emotional involvement for at least this audience member that is, frankly, not what Weerasethakul is known for, even if his Tropical Malady (2004) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) each has deeply intense and moving moments.
But you don't go to a Weerasethakul film for the excitement. This one was made in Colombia, although, again typically, you don't get a lot of explanation for what Swinton (or indeed Weerasethakul himself) is doing there. In a Weerasethakul film, you know that back stories will be hinted at sketchily, and that it's best not to try to identify too much of a sequential plot line. Who precisely the characters are in relation to each other, or to anything else for that matter, is left mysteriously imprecise, and what you have instead is a dream world in which interior sensations and objective elements of lives are mingled without anything specific to distinguish them. While there is some very fine acting indeed in this film, both from Swinton and from a superb actor, presumably Colombian, named Elkin Díaz ( about whom IMDb , at least, has no inofrmation) this is a Weerasethakul film, meaning that meaning is carried principally by those extremely long, nearly silent shots, usually of nature (though the streetscapes and parks of Bogotá seem to work just as well), in which the only sounds are natural (wind, rain, birds, insects, traffic, voices off). These either move you deeply and transport you into another dimension (as is certainly the case for me), or they drive you crazy with boredom, as I know they do for many viewers. For these sequences, the Colombian countryside works just as spectacularly well as does that of Thailand: both are lushly tropical, where rain on leaves almost becomes a character in its own right, and that's all he needs to work his magic.
Beyond that, what to say? The meeting between the Swinton and Elkan Diáz characters may appear to be totally random, yet it is the crucial episode of the film, and everything that has gone before has built up to it. It has both a deep metaphysical dimension and a powerful eco-scifi aspect that should astonish you but that may leave many viewers puzzled and frustrated. But for Weerasethakul fans like me, it is transporting, and I'm not alone: last night, at the last screening in the all-to-brief awards-qualifying run the film had the IFC Center, the venue was packed, despite omicron, and the stillness in the room during the final sequence (a long shot of a naturescape, of course), and beyond, through the credits (with the natural soundscape extended) was intense and, in itself, moving. It takes time to come out of a trance like that., Few viewers left before the lights came up, despite the extraordinarily long listing of supporters and contributors, Weerasethakul is the director we need for these times, and this film is a deeply meaningful masterpiece, or very nearly.
PS: At one point, as she's wandering around the University of Colombia campus, Swinton happens onto a performance by a jazz combo anchored by a pianist who looks astonishingly like the young Martha Argerich, the great Argentinian virtuoso. It's a wonderful performance. I covet their next album.
All the more amazing, then, that she was able to slow down and enter the intense, time-nonspecific and, frankly, difficult world of Weerasethakul, the Thai director known as a master of the enigmatic long take. The cool understatement around which she has built her career serves her well here, and, through her presence and her commitment, she creates a level of emotional involvement for at least this audience member that is, frankly, not what Weerasethakul is known for, even if his Tropical Malady (2004) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) each has deeply intense and moving moments.
But you don't go to a Weerasethakul film for the excitement. This one was made in Colombia, although, again typically, you don't get a lot of explanation for what Swinton (or indeed Weerasethakul himself) is doing there. In a Weerasethakul film, you know that back stories will be hinted at sketchily, and that it's best not to try to identify too much of a sequential plot line. Who precisely the characters are in relation to each other, or to anything else for that matter, is left mysteriously imprecise, and what you have instead is a dream world in which interior sensations and objective elements of lives are mingled without anything specific to distinguish them. While there is some very fine acting indeed in this film, both from Swinton and from a superb actor, presumably Colombian, named Elkin Díaz ( about whom IMDb , at least, has no inofrmation) this is a Weerasethakul film, meaning that meaning is carried principally by those extremely long, nearly silent shots, usually of nature (though the streetscapes and parks of Bogotá seem to work just as well), in which the only sounds are natural (wind, rain, birds, insects, traffic, voices off). These either move you deeply and transport you into another dimension (as is certainly the case for me), or they drive you crazy with boredom, as I know they do for many viewers. For these sequences, the Colombian countryside works just as spectacularly well as does that of Thailand: both are lushly tropical, where rain on leaves almost becomes a character in its own right, and that's all he needs to work his magic.
Beyond that, what to say? The meeting between the Swinton and Elkan Diáz characters may appear to be totally random, yet it is the crucial episode of the film, and everything that has gone before has built up to it. It has both a deep metaphysical dimension and a powerful eco-scifi aspect that should astonish you but that may leave many viewers puzzled and frustrated. But for Weerasethakul fans like me, it is transporting, and I'm not alone: last night, at the last screening in the all-to-brief awards-qualifying run the film had the IFC Center, the venue was packed, despite omicron, and the stillness in the room during the final sequence (a long shot of a naturescape, of course), and beyond, through the credits (with the natural soundscape extended) was intense and, in itself, moving. It takes time to come out of a trance like that., Few viewers left before the lights came up, despite the extraordinarily long listing of supporters and contributors, Weerasethakul is the director we need for these times, and this film is a deeply meaningful masterpiece, or very nearly.
PS: At one point, as she's wandering around the University of Colombia campus, Swinton happens onto a performance by a jazz combo anchored by a pianist who looks astonishingly like the young Martha Argerich, the great Argentinian virtuoso. It's a wonderful performance. I covet their next album.