Review of Memoria (2021) by Jagdtigersimp — 30 Apr 2022

Despite raving reviews from critics, Memoria offers very little substance to anyone wanting something to actually happen in a film they watch. With a run time of over 2 hours, letting you feel every minute of it by watching shots that drag, and drag, and drag, and drag. Much of the movie's runtime is devoted to unbroken shots of nature displaying underwhelming various "events" for several minutes at a time, at least twice the length necessary and many shots persist for much longer.

During the latter part of the film, a shot is shown of Hernan (Diaz) the second lying on the ground after Jessica (Swinton) asks him to demonstrate what he sleeps like without dreams.

The audience is then treated to a completely unbroken shot of watching Hernan lie on his back with his eyes open for several minutes. This trend of shots of mundane activity or dialogue takes up at least a full hour of the movie, leaving the audience many opportunities to use the washroom without fear of missing crucial exposition.

There is a sole interesting segment in the film, with the first Hernan (Urrego) as a sound engineer, after this segment anyone that wants to be spared from the struggle to stay awake as absolutely nothing remotely interesting happens for the majority of the remainder of this film. This shoutout to sound engineers and the genuinely interesting way that Hernan is able to recreate the sound Jessica hears is the single highest point in the film.

Despite the excellent segment on the in-movie sound engineer, due to the movie's obsession with prolonged shots with no audio, it extremely amplifies the missteps by the foley department. During one session of staring at nature in the background, it clearly sounds as if the rain machine (or likely mp3) is suddenly turned on then abruptly turned off.

The conclusion of the movie feels rushed and offers little explanation to any of the reasoning behind why an average movie enjoyer would have sat through more than 2 hours of actionless footage only to be treated to a lackluster ending. While other pretentious movie goes will say the film has "vision" or is "profound", anyone who has seen a movie with good pacing will find this movie a painful montage of shots of trees in a light breeze or watching Swinton sitting/standing for exorbitant periods of time.

I will not exaggerate that the same experience can be easily replicated by looking out of a window for 2 hours with noise canceling headphones. This movie would be best marketed as a sleep treatment for insomniacs as long as they keep their snoring to a minimum lest they disturb other sleeping patrons.

In conclusion, an excruciatingly tedious film that deserves a rating of no more than Zzzz.