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Memoria

100 Movies of 2021

Memoria

2021

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Tilda Swinton, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Jeanne Balibar, Juan Pablo Urrego ...

6.3

1,403

Drama The main character of the film is a woman from Scotland, who, while traveling in Colombia, begins to notice strange sounds. Soon she begins to think about their appearance.

	Media	Author	Review
		Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tilda Swinton make a dream team (...) 'Memoria' is a beautiful and mysterious movie, slow cinema that decelerates your heartbeat (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Jason Solomons The Wrap	"It’s not the sort of thing that needs poster quotes and star ratings. It wouldn’t know what to do with them. But it is cinema that, if you let it, can check our heartbeats, frustrate our minds and connect with our very souls."
		Eric Kohn IndieWire	"[It] is more meditation than movie and masterful for that reason (...) [An] absorbing and enigmatic achievement."
		David Rooney The Hollywood Reporter	"[It] won’t expand Weerasethakul’s following, but admirers will find it an imaginative, thematically and stylistically cohesive addition to his distinctive output."
		Peter Debruge Variety	"The Amazon jungle offers a fresh playground for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s usual obsessions"
		Todd McCarthy Deadline	"[Swinton's] performance here might be her most repressed and inexpressive (...) [It] feels like a cute little game calculated to captivate a special few."
		Tim Grierson Screendaily	"'Memoria' eludes easy categorisation while becoming a powerful meditation on connection, spiritual isolation and renewal"
		Ben Kenigsberg rogerebert.com	"Weerasethakul sometimes appears to be operating on a different planet from every other working filmmaker. But maybe he just sees things on Earth that no one else does"
		Joe Lipsett Bloody Disgusting	"Captivating, contemplative, and a tad frustrating, but for patient viewers, it's worth the investment (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 5)"
		Dustin Chang Screen Anarchy	"'Memoria', with languid long takes and tranquil setting, is a deeply contemplative film that offers you to experience a dreamscape in a place strange yet familiar, where you can embrace the mysteries of life"
		Mike D'Angelo AV Club	"A film you want to see on the big screen. There's something uniquely intense about hearing an audience remain utterly still for fear of breaking the spell. [It] inspires that kind of rapture. Experience its full dynamic range"
		Natalia Keogan Paste Magazine	"Fantastical, exhilarating climax and comparatively linear storyline (...) Time melts beyond its tangible limits when watching 'Memoria', resulting in an audiovisual trance disorienting in its peculiar placidity"
		Robert Daniels Polygon	"'Memoria' doesn't give too many answers. It moves at an interminable pace. But those are mostly strengths rather than faults. A sensory explosion, and its dense, immersive shrapnel isn't easily removable"
		Joshua Meyer SlashFilm	"An intriguing slice of arthouse cinema that offers less of a cut-and-dry narrative and more of a wandering experience through overlapping planes of existence and the liminal spaces between past and present"
		Jake Cunningham Empire	"Designed and deserving to be seen big and loud, 'Memoria' is a hypnotic, unquantifiable, occasionally inpenetrable sonic odyssey from a unique cinematic voice (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Roxana Hadadi Vulture	"Weerasethakul smartly interrupts his film's solemnity and serenity with moments of joie de vivre and dark humor. How smoothly 'Memoria' loops together all its unexpected moments is mostly rewarding. But that ending!"
		Richard Brody The New Yorker	"At times, Weerasethakul's long takes and subtle observations seem to tune a viewer's perceptions to a hidden realm of being"
		Phil de Semlyen Time Out	"There's nothing quite like [it] (...) An exercise in mindfulness that asks you to give yourself over to it lock, stock and barrel. If you're willing to do that, you can cancel that meditation course (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Pat Brown Slant	"Again in a Weerasethakul film, we find spirits lurking behind the everyday world, but in 'Memoria', they might just be repressed memories emanating from a world that never actually forgets (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"

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