92
Metascore
34 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Slant MagazinePat BrownSlant MagazinePat BrownAgain in a Apichatpong 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.
- 100The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawIn a calmly realist, non-mystic movie language, this director really can convince you that the living and the dead, the past and the present, the terrestrial and the other, do exist side by side.
- 100Screen DailyTim GriersonScreen DailyTim GriersonGraced by Tilda Swinton’s emptied-out performance as a woman haunted by a strange sound whose origins she is obsessed with uncovering, Memoria eludes easy categorisation while becoming a powerful meditation on connection, spiritual isolation and renewal.
- 100VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeIn Memoria, the disruptive sounds Jessica hears are a wake-up call of sorts, forcing her to engage with those dimensions of the world humans are ill-equipped to explain: what lives on when someone dies, and the way places serve as a kind of fossil imprint of everything they’ve witnessed.
- 100The Film StageDavid KatzThe Film StageDavid KatzTo be as suggestive, yet covert as possible, the great innovation of this film is the notion of how sounds can be memories—all too often in the popular imagination, we think of them as mini-movies of the mind, or visual spots of time as in The Tree of Life or the Romantic poet Wordsworth’s concept.
- 91The PlaylistCaroline TsaiThe PlaylistCaroline TsaiA master of slow cinema, Weerasethakul takes his time with every shot; long stretches of time pass without any dialogue or movement. In so doing, the film inculcates a kind of hypersensitivity in its viewers, who become suddenly attuned to each flitting blade of grass or buzzing fly that enters the shot—as well as to their own posture and breathing.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe beautiful closing landscape shots of the jungles and mountains suggest that memory extends even beyond the human dimension.
- 80Time OutPhil de SemlyenTime OutPhil de SemlyenIt’s 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.