VIFF REVIEWS: MEMORIA & TAMING THE GARDEN

Another year of VIFF coming and going meant I could return to in-theatre screenings for the first time since the pandemic began. Naturally, my re-introduction was a little bit awkward. Despite this initial trepidation, I wanted to highlight two films that have stayed with me since my initial viewing. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that both of these films explore a sense of unbelonging and unravel some truths about our deep-rooted and chaotic connections to each other and the spaces we inhabit.  

Memoria | VIFF

Memoria introduces its main character, Jessica (Tilda Swinton) at the same time it introduces the malady of unknown origin that will haunt her throughout the rest of the film. In the opening scene, Jessica is turbulently woken by a deafening rumble in the middle of the night. It’s the first moment of supernatural force that will sustain an unpredictable presence. From then on, director Apichatpong Weersethakul crafts a slowly building atmosphere that is woven with alluring esotericism. 

In Jessica’s tireless search to find out the source and nature of the jarring sound, we follow wandering vignettes of her daily life. Jessica has recently moved to Colombia and feels uncomfortable in her environment, among family and strangers. Burdened by language barriers and a growingly altered psychological state, one could say that she is detached, and Swinton excels at this type of role, appearing aloof. Deeply immersed in her point of view, Weersethakul places us in a similar outsider perspective.  

Memoria avoids music and instead emphasizes the sounds Jessica hears, such as the erratic bustle of Bogotá, the intoxicatingly lush countryside, and an archaeological digging site—backgrounds that serve as second violin to the aura of tension and latent discovery.  

The surface exploration of the secondary characters in the film, facilitated by Jessica’s struggle to interact and communicate, works in favor of our suspension of disbelief. When the possibility of the existence of ghosts—past and future versions of people—or curse-bearing dogs is made known, the director has already lulled us into an altered state of being. A state where we can renounce any semblance of understanding and go along with Jessica on her rabbit-hole journey to find out...what exactly? I’m not sure I can answer that because much to its strength, the film’s metaphors and folklore largely remain ciphered.  

Where forces are mainly invisible in Memoria, in Taming the Garden they are gargantuan. In this feature documentary by director Salomé Jash, humans and nature share the limelight in a battle of Quixotic proportions. Another slow-builder, Taming the Garden documents the massive efforts of a group of men on the coast of the Republic of Georgia to uproot living trees to be shipped off across the ocean to a former Georgian prime minister and billionaire’s private garden.  

Taming the Garden | VIFF

Periodically introducing the context of this unusual and immeasurable venture, the film starts to build up an ecology of the trees and the region from which they are being taken. Scenes of laborers and heavy machinery fill the screen while metallic and earthy echoes rumble and groan. The community and its villagers appear as the film orchestrates this cacophony of elements with ease and naturality. 

Jumping in and out of conversations fly-on-the-wall style, Taming the Garden presents a cross-section where some of the villagers are happy about the events taking place while others are quick to reveal some of the corrupt goings-on of unpaid restitution and broken promises by the visually absent yet omnipresent billionaire. Even more poignant than the candid dialogue we are made privy to, is the camera juxtaposing the villagers and laborers, dwarfed by cranes and bulldozers, and more poetically, by the majestic moving trees. In these moments, the documentary reaffirms that the inhabitants of the rural community are in fact left helpless despite their differing stances, stating the unwavering conclusion that wealth uproots life. 

Scale and sound are the primary devices that build up the film’s incantatory pull, and it operates in the realm of the immediate and the symbolic. Though one can easily find themselves entranced by its meditative treatment of sequences and the beautifully uncanny images that the transportation of the massive trees creates, this film just as quickly cements you back in reality. There are many instances of the villagers bearing witness (and some protesting, to no avail) the uprooting of their centenary legacies.  

Deeply in tune with these understandings yet subtle in its delivery, Jash crafts a tension that is well balanced and manages not only to remain unbroken but crescendos into a bizarrely mesmerizing and equally satisfactory closing sequence.  

Though vastly different in form, Memoria and Taming the Garden share a carefully crafted sensibility that opens up a world for the viewer to immerse themself. Both films are well worth the watch if you are willing to follow along a contemplative journey that meditates on the plights of its characters to reconnect with some sense of belonging.