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Memoria
A chronicle of the genesis and creation of Memoria, the new film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. After visiting Colombia in 2017, Apichatpong chose the country as the location for his first feature shot outside of his native Thailand. In the following two years, he returned for several visits and travelled extensively, listening to the stories of the people he met along the way. The book 'Memoria' gathers the memories he collected, in the form of photographs, a personal diary and sketchbook, research notes, treatment excerpts, and email correspondence.
- GenresFilmArtNonfiction
400 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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February 10, 2023In the last few years, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has become one of my absolute favorite living directors. So, although I don't often read books like this, after seeing his most recent film Memoria I felt compelled to dive into this volume, which documents its conception and production.
Memoria the film is driven by a simple conceit. Jessica (Tilda Swinton) is a Scottish orchid farmer living in Bogotá, Colombia whose husband has recently died. One morning, she's awakened by a loud booming sound that she later realizes is entirely in her mind. This strange, unnerving sound recurs repeatedly at random intervals, and so she goes on a search for its source and meaning. As she does, she wanders throughout Bogotá and eventually to a small rural town - a succession of loosely connected scenes imbued with Weerasethakul's distinctively subtle, meditative brand of magical realism.
At the beginning of this book, we get Weerasethakul's account of the genesis of the film. For a number of years, he suffered from an incredibly rare condition (with only around sixty known patients in the entire world) known as Exploding Head Syndrome. Just like Jessica, he would be shocked by a loud, disorienting sound that only he could hear. Often, this would happen in the middle of the night, so that for years he dealt with chronic insomnia. Meanwhile, he and Tilda Swinton had developed a decade-long friendship, and wanted to make a film together. At some point, he formulated the premise of what was to become Memoria, deciding to cast Tilda Swinton as a kind of stand-in for himself, and to take the major step of making a film in a way he'd never done before: with professional actors, shot and set outside of Thailand, and in languages (English and Spanish) other than his mother tongue.
In the rest of the volume, we get an extraordinary array of materials related to the film. There are a pages and pages from the notebooks in which Weerasethakul worked out the shape of the film. There are emails he traded with Tilda Swinton as well as members of his crew working out various aspects of the film. There are articles he gathered while doing research on various of its elements: on Exploding Head Syndrome, Colombian archeology, the history of the La Línea tunnel linking Bogotá with the Pacific coast, trepanation, the cultivation of cut flowers (one of Colombia's biggest industries), and more. There are many photographs and set diagrams, an interview with Tilda Swinton, sections of the shooting script with Weerasethakul's notes, as well as a daily diary describing the forty-two day shoot written by Giovanni Marchini Camia, a film critic who was present the whole time and helped to assemble the book.
For fans of the film, one of the most fascinating aspects of the book is its accounts of the many scenes that didn't make it into the final cut. Apparently, Weerasethakul often pares down his films as he makes them, shedding and cutting elements along the way until what he's left with is the poetic, cinematic core that we see on the screen. Equally fascinating are the various accounts of his working process, in which he is incredibly and admirably adaptable to the input of his actors and crew. Lastly, the hodgepodge of materials the book contains are assembled in a beautiful way that has a poetry of its own: the book doesn't just document the making of a work of art, but is a work of art in its own right. All in all, it's very much worth taking the time, not just to flip through it, but to read it cover to cover.
Memoria the film is driven by a simple conceit. Jessica (Tilda Swinton) is a Scottish orchid farmer living in Bogotá, Colombia whose husband has recently died. One morning, she's awakened by a loud booming sound that she later realizes is entirely in her mind. This strange, unnerving sound recurs repeatedly at random intervals, and so she goes on a search for its source and meaning. As she does, she wanders throughout Bogotá and eventually to a small rural town - a succession of loosely connected scenes imbued with Weerasethakul's distinctively subtle, meditative brand of magical realism.
At the beginning of this book, we get Weerasethakul's account of the genesis of the film. For a number of years, he suffered from an incredibly rare condition (with only around sixty known patients in the entire world) known as Exploding Head Syndrome. Just like Jessica, he would be shocked by a loud, disorienting sound that only he could hear. Often, this would happen in the middle of the night, so that for years he dealt with chronic insomnia. Meanwhile, he and Tilda Swinton had developed a decade-long friendship, and wanted to make a film together. At some point, he formulated the premise of what was to become Memoria, deciding to cast Tilda Swinton as a kind of stand-in for himself, and to take the major step of making a film in a way he'd never done before: with professional actors, shot and set outside of Thailand, and in languages (English and Spanish) other than his mother tongue.
In the rest of the volume, we get an extraordinary array of materials related to the film. There are a pages and pages from the notebooks in which Weerasethakul worked out the shape of the film. There are emails he traded with Tilda Swinton as well as members of his crew working out various aspects of the film. There are articles he gathered while doing research on various of its elements: on Exploding Head Syndrome, Colombian archeology, the history of the La Línea tunnel linking Bogotá with the Pacific coast, trepanation, the cultivation of cut flowers (one of Colombia's biggest industries), and more. There are many photographs and set diagrams, an interview with Tilda Swinton, sections of the shooting script with Weerasethakul's notes, as well as a daily diary describing the forty-two day shoot written by Giovanni Marchini Camia, a film critic who was present the whole time and helped to assemble the book.
For fans of the film, one of the most fascinating aspects of the book is its accounts of the many scenes that didn't make it into the final cut. Apparently, Weerasethakul often pares down his films as he makes them, shedding and cutting elements along the way until what he's left with is the poetic, cinematic core that we see on the screen. Equally fascinating are the various accounts of his working process, in which he is incredibly and admirably adaptable to the input of his actors and crew. Lastly, the hodgepodge of materials the book contains are assembled in a beautiful way that has a poetry of its own: the book doesn't just document the making of a work of art, but is a work of art in its own right. All in all, it's very much worth taking the time, not just to flip through it, but to read it cover to cover.
December 28, 2023
There are some insane shots related in here that don't make it into the final edit of this miraculous film. Tilda Swinton with a huge trepanned hole in her head that someone is watching like a movie, Hernan laying a pipe bomb(!?), the two of them kissing amid a swirling mass of vivid geometric shapes, a puddle of Swinton's tears forming on the table. I'm kinda shocked the alien spaceship actually made it in lol.
If anyone knows any books that feel like Weerasethakul films please please please let me know
If anyone knows any books that feel like Weerasethakul films please please please let me know
January 9, 2024
Unas enormes ganas de trabajar con este señor. Me encanta cómo Tilda expresa una visión diferente a lo que comúnmente se nos repite, ser profesional no es algo que se tiene que relacionar con el arte.
Una hermosa historia, no tan solo en la película, pero en todo lo que la rodea.
Una hermosa historia, no tan solo en la película, pero en todo lo que la rodea.
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April 10, 2023DNF left it at Tiye's house (it's his). TBC in November
May 6, 2023
I really wanted to rewatch Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, but due to the film’s unique “never-ending” theatrical release strategy, that was not an option, so I picked up this behind-the-scenes art book instead. It’s a gorgeous volume, clothbound with full-page spreads, but I found the information a bit disjointed and lacking. The book comprises Weerasethakul’s preproduction notebooks and other materials that inspired Memoria, such as scientific articles, news reports, and archaeological specimens. Having seen the movie (a few years ago, when it first came out), a lot of this reminded me of aspects I had forgotten, and tied together parts of the film that didn’t make sense to me. I’m sure that if I ever get to rewatch Memoria I will come away with a deeper understanding, having been privy to Weerasethakul’s thought processes. But the layout was scattered and kind of bad… it’s gorgeous (though not without a few questionable graphic design decisions) but could have been put together a lot more thoughtfully. Excerpts from the script are scattered throughout at random; while gorgeous, I would have rather read the entire thing. My favorite part of the book was the last section, someone’s production diaries (I am not actually sure whose!) I love reading production diaries, like Emma Thompson’s exceptional account of filming Sense & Sensibility, and Robert Rodriguez’s Rebel Without a Crew, which I am also currently reading. Ironic that the section with no photographs at all gave me the most insight into the mysteries of this beautiful, multilayered film.
March 3, 2023
Toutes mes attentes ont été comblées. Cet album est totalement à la hauteur du film et propose d'explorer encore plus en profondeur les ramifications déjà amorcées à l'écran. C'est un plaisir de parcourir des reproductions venant de plusieurs supports différents : carnets, script, photos d'archives, des coulisses, documentaires... Un ouvrage très inspirant.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 23, 2022
It makes the film feel different. Really appreciate the small mention of Luis Ospina. Would love to read more research on making the film.
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