At one point they were just there, the inexplicable bangs in the head of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (51). Dull primal drones, like an explosion in the interior of the earth: whoemp. But any description, including this one, falls short of the sonic experience. “It’s like trying to communicate something that is uncommunicable,” says Thailand’s most famous filmmaker who was awarded the Prince Claus Prize in 2016. ‘Because it’s not a real sound, it just exists in my head. You can google it: exploding head syndrome† More people have it. Usually I had it in the morning, then it took about five to ten minutes per attack. It’s not so much painful as it is very strange and frustrating because you can’t really explain it. At a certain point I also saw images with it: geometric, usually circular and dark shapes. Doctors said, maybe it’s stress. But I don’t know if that was it.’
And what do you do then, as a filmmaker? Weerasethakul poured his condition into a movie: Memories, in which Colombian orchid specialist Jessica (Tilda Swinton) suffers from the same ailment. In the film there is a scene in which this Jessica tries to reconstruct the explosions with the help of a sound engineer. ‘That scene reflects on my own frustration, on the inability to fully explain your feelings for the other person. And also to explain what you want to film. In that sense Memories about film itself. Jessica is cinema, I told my producer. He didn’t understand that, nobody understood me. Except Tilda. She understood immediately.’
Dreaming awake
Tilda Swinton, star actress and patroness of cinema, known for her collaborations with signature filmmakers such as Derek Jarman (The Garden), Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir) and Luca Guadagnino (Io sono l’amore† She has been a big fan of Weerasethakul since she was eighteen years ago Tropical Malady saw and became acquainted with the wonderful oeuvre of the Thai. He won the Golden Palm in Cannes in 2010 for his supernatural jungle fairy tale Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, awarded by jury chairman and kindred spirit Tim Burton. ‘Exercises in waking dreams,’ wrote Volkskrantreviewer Kevin Toma on Weerasethakul’s work. Films in which the boundaries between humans, animals and vegetation can just as easily blur, and time has its own tread.
The day after the world premiere of Memories in Cannes, Weerasethakul – known as Joe – and the Scottish actress take turns sitting down for an interview with a small group of journalists. When they alternate, they hug each other. They seem made for each other, the rap-speaking actress with razor-sharp diction and the somewhat shy and short film-maker, who starts his reflections with a grunting hum.
Tilda Swinton is the first star actor he worked with. Why exactly her?
‘Hmm. I see her as a human being, no different from the other actors I’ve ever worked with. Exactly the same really: there is no special treatment on set. We’ll protect her, of course, but not Hollywood style. It is more familiar, also because Tilda connects everyone with everyone. She likes to throw parties, then let us all dance together. She understands the dynamics of the creative process. She also does not stay in her role between shots. I know actors who need that, which is fine too. But as soon as the camera is off, Tilda instantly becomes Tilda again. That is a wonderful thing to behold: how absorbed she is in the presence of the film. After she arrived in Bogotá she opened her arms for me. “You can do anything with the,” she said. “Dress me.” I think it’s a nice gesture. At the same time she is very involved. Tilda can also just say: oh, this knot doesn’t suit the character.’
In the puzzle-like Memories Swinton’s Jessica, hampered by her explosion syndrome, wanders through Colombia. First in Bogotá, where she visits her sick sister, later through the jungle, where reality seems to mix with an anterior or timeless reality.
Blending Swinton into Bogotá’s street scene was one of the tasks the filmmaker had set himself for his first non-Thai feature. “Tilda finds it difficult to keep her hair up,” Weerasethakul says. ‘I was very touched by her dedication. In the months leading up to the shooting, she kept sending photos: look, it’s already a few centimeters longer! I wanted her to fit among the pedestrians of the city. dressing down Tilda – an almost impossible task.’ It was not the actress’s commitment: she left the scissors alone and practiced Spanish for her role. But with her characteristic pale face, she remained a remarkable sight, especially in South America. Swinton, cheerfully: ‘There’s nothing you can do about that. Listen: I stand out, in most places on Earth. Except in Scotland, there are more people of my skin color there.’
Contact with the dead
On the day of the interview, the 61-year-old actress has another haircut: shaved on the sides, proudly upright on the crown. She dresses in a pajama-like suit made of parachute cloth, with white, yellow and purple patches. ‘We had wanted to work together for a long time, but I couldn’t see how I could make a difference in Joe’s oeuvre, which is so much an expression of the Thai landscape. Maybe I could play a stranger. When we discussed that possibility, we thought: you can be a stranger anywhere. We decided to choose a country where we were both foreigners so that we would go through the same thing. After visiting the Cartagena film festival about five years ago, Joe called me: it must be Colombia.’
Colombia and Thailand, two countries where people are more open to the contact between the dead and the living, in books, movies or everyday life. Something you could also say about Scotland, with all those haunted castles. Swinton: ‘Right, so now I encourage Joe to make a film in Scotland. His understanding of the mystical makes him a sort of cousin to me. I remember the impact Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s books had on me as a teenager. That sense of boundlessness, that you can talk to your dead grandfather. It’s a cliché, very banal, but for me working with Joe was like a dream. His cinema lives and breathes in an area that seems familiar to me.’
Weerasethakul: ‘It is also an illusion to talk about Chinese cinema, or Thai cinema. As if that cinema only consists of the language spoken in it, or how people dress. While dealing with story time or editing in films is much more decisive, the craft that all filmmakers share with each other. It helped me as a filmmaker to go to another place. It is humbling: you have to accept that you don’t know much either, in such a different place. And that it is not bad at all not to know a lot. I could exercise less control, had to rely on others. That calmed me down.’ Memories is about the notion that we are only here temporarily, he says. ‘That everything is connected, that we are also the trees. Only right now you are in this body, but that will change again. You can call that reincarnation, but it doesn’t really matter what you call it. What matters is that all the elements keep changing.’
The mystical explosions in his head eventually disappeared. ‘I don’t know exactly when, but I estimate after about two years. At a certain point I realized: hey, it’s gone.’ Weerasethakul was also suddenly able to sleep well again after a period of insomnia for months, during (and after) the recordings of Memories†
Swinton, firmly: ‘That didn’t surprise me at all. There was something in his head, and he was trying to get it out – that’s what a filmmaker does.’
Palm
In 2010, Apichatpong Weerasethakul became the first (and only) Thai filmmaker to win the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives† “Competition may be more appropriate for something like horse racing than it is for movies,” the filmmaker says. ‘But the attention your film gets is very nice. Now when I come to a country like Peru – I’ll give just one example – people know that film. That’s because of the Palm. And it means a lot to me.’