Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.

Text Content or SSML code:

Similarly, his film Memoria in 2022 revolves around Jessica, a Scottish woman with Exploding Head Syndrome. Set in Colombia, the film begins with her encounter with the banging sound during sleep and deploys restricted narration to guide the audience through her episodic journey to trace the source. The film mainly utilizes objective depth of narration with the exception of the audible component. The captivating sound design in memoria constitutes a significant part of the film’s sensory experience and creates a profound connection between the audience and the character. The stylistic choice to allow the audience to hear the sound exclusive to Jessica, in scenes like the one set in the restaurant, establishes a shared perception and existence among viewers with her. This auditory decision effectively builds suspense around the banging sound and makes the audience willing to delve deeper into the narrative. beyond the subjective choice of the sound, the cinematography and editing in the film follows the naturalistic and objective style with long takes, wide shots, handheld camera work and minimal close-ups or POV shots. Majority of the scenes in Memoria have only one or a few wide shots. Like in this scene, the long takes of the band's entire performance is shown to the audience, generously asking them to be present with Jessica. This approach helps the audience further understand Jessica’s spectral subjectivity that derived from the weaving themes of displacement and connection. This central scene in the film unfolds with the tranquill long takes depicting the local villager Hernan’s entire sleeping or death experience. The cinematic choice not only creates suspense and deepens the mysteries, but also enables the audience to align with Jessica. Sharing her emotional turmoil, the audience goes through confusion, sorrow and surprise alongside her, forging a temporal connection that resonates with the complexities and subtlety of Apichatpong’s cinematic language. The minimalist and observational visual style of the film establishes a sense of strangeness and distance, cultivating a haunted atmosphere in the physical environment. The stylistic choice aids viewers in comprehending Jessica’s introspection of her own presence and memory, alluding to the metaphysical elements in the film’s sci-fi epiphany ending. Memoria is Apichatpong’s first film shot outside Thailand. Same as Blissfully yours, the theme of displacement is central to Memoria. Jessica, as an expatriate in Colombia, delves into the mystery of sound and lost memory in the history of a foreign continent. As a sci-fi lover himself, apichatpong reveals the origin of the banging sound in the end of the film. The uncanny soundscape in the tropical nature fully immerses the audience in an otherworldly and ancestral world where time is stopped, confused and subverted. it elevates the personal journal of the memory to a larger theme of colonial history and sentiment etched in the collective memory of people. The following shots of people and landscape at the very end of the film expands it into a broader historical context. Through these meditative shots, Apichatpong invites the audience to connect with others both geographically and historically, providing a glimpse into the lost memory that was experienced by our contemporary human beings and their ancestors.