Fifth about The Seventh

Memoria

Memoria: to say that Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film is ponderous is quite an understatement. Its reliance on lengthy, quasi-static sustained shots is a test of one’s stamina and/or patience. This is a sensorial experience, not a narrative experience; something different for sure, but not necessarily working for everybody. The story follows a woman who starts listening for a unique sound and tries to figure out what is behind that phenomenon. The images shot by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom are beautiful, lush, and painterly; the sound design of the film is equally solid and essential. The performances are minimalist and extremely quiet. Tilda Swinton does a lot with her posture; she looks almost alien, always curious and surprised by her surroundings. Juan Pablo Urrego and Elkin Díaz, playing the two men she meets on her journey, are both quietly dignified.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: