Latest / MUBI Podcast / Being Like Water: Tilda Swinton and Apichatpong Weerasethakul on MEMORIA

Transcript

Being Like Water: Tilda Swinton and Apichatpong Weerasethakul on MEMORIA · MUBI Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello, dear MUBI podcast listeners.
• 0:00
  Rico Gagliano here, your host.
• 0:04
  If you've been tuning in the last few weeks, you know we are five episodes into our second season, titled Only In Theaters.
• 0:09
  We have been telling the stories of different cinemas that made history.
• 0:13
  We'll be back next week with the final installment of Season two.
• 0:16
  But today, something special for you.
• 0:19
  It comes courtesy of our Latin American Show MUBI podcast Encuentros.
• 0:23
  Now, that show is usually in Spanish, but this bonus episode is an English language conversation between director Apichatpong Weerasethakul and actor/producer Tilda Swinton, talking about their Cannes-winning film,Memoria.
• 0:36
  They reunited in Colombia, where the film was shot, to talk about their creative processes and their experiences working together on the film. If you like what you hear and you're a Spanish speaker, subscribe to Encuentros to catch all the episodes wherever you get your podcasts.
• 0:51
  Do enjoy, and we will see you here next week.
• 1:08
  MUBI and La Corriente del Golfo Podcast present...
• 1:14
  Encuentros, a podcast by MUBI, an ever-changing collection of incredible hand-picked cinema, a new film every single day, a new conversation each episode.
• 1:26
  For me, to be working with you and to work in the way that we are working now regularly, I mean, not just working on Memoria, for me, it's not only the revelation of something new, but it's also a return to my roots in film making.
• 1:42
  In this special episode of MUBI Podcast Encuentros, two of international cinema's most remarkable voices come together to share and discuss the films we love.
• 1:52
  There's a monk that I listen to and, you know, he mentioned about that we shouldn't tie ourselves to anything. And that's so beautiful, you know, that when someone asks me, who are you?
• 2:05
  You know, if I can I don't want to say, you know, that I'm a film maker, I'm an artist, you know, because you are tied to that identity, you know?
• 2:21
  This conversation touches on the creative process of two of film's greatest names who are working together on the film Memoria, an intimate collaboration founded on their long friendship.
• 2:32
  Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a world-renowned Thai artist and film director.
• 2:35
  The topics of dreams and death are essential to his filmography.
• 2:40
  He raises big questions about time and our relationship with the spiritual world.
• 2:45
  Winner of the Cannes Palme d'Or in 2012, for Uncle Boonmee, who can recall his past lives, Weerasethakul returned to the main competition years later with Memoria, his first film shot outside of Thailand, which received the jury prize ex aequo.
• 3:03
  Tilda Swinton is a Scottish artist, actress and producer.
• 3:06
  She began her career performing and collaborating with experimental filmmaker Derek Jarman.
• 3:11
  She has worked with directors such as Jim Jarmusch, Wes Anderson, Luca Guadagnino, the Coen brothers, and Joanna Hogg.
• 3:18
  Her performances have been characterized by the subtlety of her gestures and her magnetic presence.
• 3:24
  In 2007, she won the Academy Award for Best Performance by an actress in a supporting role for the movie Michael Clayton.
• 3:32
  She has combined her acting in major Hollywood productions with a wide range of characters created by contemporary filmmakers such as Bong Joon Ho, Pedro Almodovar, Lynne Ramsay and more recently, Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
• 3:46
  Swinton and Weerasethakul reunited in Colombia for Memoria's release and talked about the importance of understanding that you're not in control and how cinema is an attempt to put what's inside one's head on screen, something they achieve through sound.
• 4:11
  - How's your sleep?
• 4:11
  - Here?
• 4:12
  - Yeah.
• 4:12
  - I hardly slept last night.
• 4:15
  I mean, I've only had one night here.
• 4:15
  I hardly slept.
• 4:19
  - I woke up every two hours.
• 4:19
  - Oh.
• 4:21
  And is it jetlag, you think?
• 4:23
  Actually, I think it was more.
• 4:26
  Didn't feel like jetlag.
• 4:26
  It felt like excitement.
• 4:29
  I just kept thinking, oh, is it time to get up? No, no. Go back to sleep.
• 4:32
  Is it time to get up? I'm very...
• 4:35
  Having just arrived back, I really want to get into Colombia. I really want to reenter.
• 4:42
  Right, right, right. Me, too. I want to walk around and see what I remember.
• 4:47
  Yeah. And just see all our friends and...
• 4:50
  And be back in.
• 4:50
  This is why I'm a little bit, I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I'm a little frustrated that I'm only here for a week because I want to, I want to be starting another journey here. I want to be here for months.
• 5:04
  The special episode Being Like Water.
• 5:10
  These are the first Colombian audiences to have seen the film.
• 5:14
  - Right. Right.
• 5:14
  - So, could you gather from them some sense of of the nature of Colombia in the film?
• 5:23
  I mean, what was their experience?
• 5:26
  They were impressed by how the film captured Bogota, you know, this heaviness and the architecture and the rains and that somehow, they sensed authenticity, you know, and somebody told me nobody had been captured, this mood or spirit of the town.
• 5:52
  Because this, of course, is one of the first questions that people ask us about this film.
• 5:58
  I think a good one because it informs the spirit of the film itself that, you know, why did we make it in Colombia?
• 6:05
  And the story goes, once upon a time, that you and I had the idea of this film, or rather the germ, the kind of very, very nascent embryonic spirit, which I believe is still there in the film that we finally made, even though we sort of conjured it over ten years ago, this idea of a journey and of a response between a person and the environment, and also something about the crossroads between time and something very sort of existential.
• 6:41
  That came first and then Colombia came after.
• 6:45
  And people are intrigued by that.
• 6:51
  And as the story goes, just to be quite schematic about it, we had been talking for a while about this idea, but not known where we were going to be.
• 6:59
  We knew quite quickly, I think, that we didn't want to be in Thailand.
• 7:07
  - No.
• 7:07
  - And one of the reasons for that, and tell me if I'm remembering it correctly, was because I was very cautious about, having established my real, proper, you know, desire to be in your frame as a presence and as a performer, I was very cautious about being in your frame in Thailand because I could not figure out a way.
• 7:34
  And then you agreed that, it was, we couldn't quite understand how I could be in a Thai frame.
• 7:41
  In fact, I tried to write, you know, with you in the frame, in the pages before, way beforeMemoria planning, like 2000, early 2000 even.
• 7:50
  No, actually 2010, 2013, when I'm developing Cemetery Of Splendor that take place in my hometown.
• 8:04
  Yeah. And I know it is not working.
• 8:08
  - Yeah.
• 8:08
  - You know, even from the pages. So...
• 8:12
  And we, and then I remember there was a moment when we even talked about, because one of the things that resonates for me, I think, to be, again, very practical about it. And it made me feel that it might be possible for me to be in your frame anywhere, wherever it was going to be, was that this attention to the kind of trauma bell ringing in a place is something that means something to me as a Scottish person, it's something that I feel in Scotland.
• 8:43
  It's not just something that I pick upin places that I'm not from.
• 8:47
  It's also something that feels very, very familiar and very natural to me as a Scottish person. And so there was a minute when we wondered whether we might be in Scotland, but then quickly we realized that what we really wanted was to find a place where neither of us was from and a place that we both knew equally. And then came the search of, you know, looking at lists and lists and thinking of where it could possibly be.
• 9:14
  Mm hmm.
• 9:15
  And then you came to the film festival in Cartagena, that was it.
• 9:20
  Mm.
• 9:21
  I remember you said it's Colombia. S.O.S! Yes. And visually coming here in Bogota, to be confronted, you know, with this huge mountain and heavy cloud and then the certain kind of threatening feelings and something that I don't know, you know, there's something mysterious about it that I think is synchronized with what I was through at that time- with this sound in my head.
• 9:50
  - Mm.
• 9:53
  And I think that's why I wrote to you, and I think we embraced this idea of not knowing.
• 9:59
  - Yeah.
• 9:59
  - Yeah.
• 10:00
  It was beautiful.
• 10:03
  I mean, that's very much at the heart of it. This sense of...
• 10:07
  of not knowing. And that the person, let's say the avatar, I hesitate to use the word character because it's really inappropriate, because we're not working with that kind of theatrical construct.
• 10:20
  But the person, the spirit of Jessica, who was going to be moving through the film, who was going to be the guide for the audience in this environment of Colombia, is dealing with a mystery in her own daily life, and that felt so right.
• 10:41
  And you had, of course, this experience of the bang.
• 10:45
  Talk about that first and then we'll talk about about my experiences.
• 10:51
  So, talk about that, because that started after we started to consider the germ of the film.
• 10:58
  And then you started having the combination of the bang and the insomnia.
• 11:02
  Were they relate...? I mean, which came first? Can you remember?
• 11:07
  - I think it must be insomnia.
• 11:07
  - Yeah.
• 11:12
  And insomnia may be because of the work and depression...
• 11:20
  and the bang came.
• 11:23
  I don't know for to rescue or something because I feel fascinated by it.
• 11:28
  - Yeah.
• 11:28
  - It happened early in the morning and just bang and, but not like in the film, you know, it's not jumpy.
• 11:37
  It was the idea of the sound, when it's like when you are, have a conversation in yourself, it's not a sound, it's some...
• 11:48
  It's like a sound but the idea in the head.
• 11:51
  Yeah.
• 11:51
  And, it progressed through the years.
• 11:55
  I think I had it for two or three years and then I could control it, you know, this big or small, or when it's going to come.
• 12:07
  So you could invite it?
• 12:08
  - Yes. But it had to start first.
• 12:08
  - Okay.
• 12:12
  And then, oh, okay.
• 12:12
  And the machine is running.
• 12:16
  So, like a sneeze?
• 12:18
  Yes, in a way. In a way.
• 12:18
  And then curiously, there were appearing geometric forms, you know, square and a lot of circular thing, like white flash in the dark with the bang.
• 12:35
  And it's like animation with circles getting smaller or bigger.
• 12:43
  And that was in the first early, early draft of the film too, you know, that actually Hernán at the river was full of forms, geometric form over him. Yeah.
• 12:57
  Yeah. So, it happening during my trip in Colombia too, after Cartagena and Bogota, Medellin, and it's always accompanied me there.
• 13:09
  I think, you know, when I see the film, there's a line in the film which, the more I see it, the more I find it resonates.
• 13:18
  When, you know, for somebody to say about anything, whether it's a thought or whether it's a belief or whether it's an experience, it sounds different in my own head.
• 13:29
  It's like, that in itself is such an enormous bag of wonder that we as beings can try and describe things to each other.
• 13:40
  We can try and communicate, but we have to accept that we may never be able.
• 13:47
  We almost certainly cannot really communicate. And I love that.
• 13:51
  I mean, that's one of the things I most love about cinema is that it's this attempt to put out on the screen what is inside our heads.
• 14:04
  I find myself very moved by the acknowledgment that that's impossible.
• 14:09
  It's actually impossible to take outside what's meant to be inside.
• 14:17
  And if you look at the film, there are not many bangs, actually.
• 14:21
  - No.
• 14:21
  - But it feels more or the idea of it, no?
• 14:25
  Because once you've had one and the first one comes within- the first seconds of the film actually.
• 14:29
  - Right.
• 14:32
  The audience is complicit because the audience is now literally as close as they can be inside Jessica's head.
• 14:39
  Right.
• 14:41
  So, we are, all of us, Jessica and the audience, I mean, particularly in the scene in the restaurant, where there are two bangs, there's this feeling of...
• 14:52
  And also what I love is that there are other people.
• 14:55
  There's Jessica's sister and brother-in-law and nephew who are present, but they can't hear it.
• 15:02
  So we, the audience and Jessica, we have this, we're sharing this experience.
• 15:08
  Yes.
• 15:09
  It's very tender.
• 15:09
  The audience is waiting as well.
• 15:14
  - And just as shocked as she is.
• 15:14
  - Right.
• 15:18
  And the thing is also, as the movie progresses, I feel that it's opening up as well, that, like you say, the sound, only you can hear it really, you know.
• 15:31
  But I think also the story, or what the others...
• 15:38
  I mean the timeline or something, I think the audience, individual audience feel in...
• 15:46
  - his or her own interpretation.
• 15:46
  - Mm.
• 15:49
  - Or connection with Jessica.
• 15:49
  - Mm.
• 15:52
  Yeah. With their own experience. Yeah.
• 15:55
  So, isome people said to me afterwards, like, it doesn't feel like watching a film.
• 16:02
  - Just experience something.
• 16:02
  - Yeah.
• 16:05
  Yeah. Not much of a story.
• 16:14
  Esta bien?
• 16:19
  So, let me ask you, when you said that, in early drafts, you were thinking of replicating this visual aspect to the sound, this sort of fragmentation of the image and these geometric shapes and things.
• 16:38
  At what point, and can you remember why you decided to not do that but to stick with the sound?
• 16:48
  Because I journey with the character through sound.
• 16:54
  Actually, I imagined a sound as I wrote it.
• 16:58
  But then at that moment, when this square circular thing pops up, I feel distracted, and I feel that this maybe, how you say, it's too much.
• 17:11
  That I just feel that I, I mean, how to create the same feeling through sound rather than, you know...
• 17:21
  to visualize it and how to...
• 17:21
  how do you say?
• 17:28
  How do you say, concretize how...
• 17:32
  - Mm.
• 17:32
  - So maybe...
• 17:35
  Yeah, I'm just trying to imagine what that would have done to me, the viewer.
• 17:40
  I think I might have minded that some mystery might have gone because with sound, there's always this question of accuracy, interpretation. You know, the scene in the sound in the recording studio is such like a complete portrait of an artist trying to get her work out of her head and interpreted.
• 18:11
  It's very practical, that scene, and the fact that it's so difficult for her to explain and so difficult for him to interpret.
• 18:20
  But he has these ways of doing it.
• 18:24
  - You're right.
• 18:24
  - I think is really beautiful.
• 18:28
  But because we're dealing in the realm of sound and because, as she says, it sounds different in my own head, there's this sort of assumption that it's always going to be mysterious or the question of accuracy is always going to be partial or compromised, or one's going to have to have a sense of humility around that. Whereas with visual representation, one sort of gives up that sense of mystery because it's there.
• 18:55
  - It's concrete.- I-t's concrete. Yeah.
• 18:58
  Yeah.
• 18:59
  But also, back to our decision to come here, I remember when we were shooting, looking in the monitor, which, of course, is a... So ancient that I remember making films without monitors.
• 19:13
  And I started when the monitor first appeared, I had, again, a sort of slightly confused relationship with the monitor because I think there's some things the monitor can give you, and there's a lot of things the monitor can't give you, but it can give you the frame.
• 19:27
  And the frame, of course, is everything.
• 19:32
  And I remember all of us looking at the monitor in the first few days of shooting with you.
• 19:37
  - Right.
• 19:37
  - And going, ha, looks like an Apichatpong film, but we're in Bogota. How is it possible?
• 19:42
  - Yes? I don't remember that.
• 19:42
  - Yeah. And it felt...
• 19:45
  it almost looked. And at that stage, of course, because at that stage you had only worked in Thailand. Your frames were pretty much all from Thailand.
• 19:53
  I'm sorry.
• 19:54
  No, it's wonderful.
• 19:54
  It felt like the jungle in Phayao.
• 19:59
  It's a new country you made for us.
• 20:03
  You know, there is a country, a state, it's like I always say that cinema is a state of its own.
• 20:10
  - We go to the state of cinema.
• 20:10
  - Yeah, right.
• 20:13
  And the state of Apichatpong cinema, doesn't matter where you are.
• 20:17
  - You're in Colombia, you're in...
• 20:17
  - No! I try to escape from myself, you know,- because I was in FICCI, right?
• 20:25
  - Yeah.
• 20:28
  And they're showing clips before the ceremony, you know, give me this award and, maybe in your year too, you know, they have this beautiful montage of past films and I feel like, oh, it's like a funeral.
• 20:42
  Oh, no, it's awful, though.
• 20:42
  It's really awful.
• 20:45
  One has to be careful with oneself at moments like that.
• 20:47
  - But it's very emotional.
• 20:47
  - Yeah. It is.
• 20:50
  I mean, the only good thing is, after looking at those obituaries, I mean, one hopes that one wants to make more work.
• 21:00
  - Exactly how I feel.
• 21:00
  - You go, oh, I have only just started.
• 21:02
  - I have to keep going.
• 21:02
  - But that how I feel, Tilda,- And then I thought, okay, Colombia.
• 21:05
  - Yeah.
• 21:08
  And it's going to be a new chapter in my career.
• 21:12
  - Yeah.
• 21:12
  - But then my editor, you know, look at the footage and said, oh, you could have shot this in your backyard.
• 21:20
  No! No, I think there's two ways of reading this.
• 21:26
  I think that that's the very self-deprecating and slightly self-defeating and masochistic way of reading it.
• 21:32
  I think that what I'm trying to say is that your frame is a place of its own and I believe you could bring your frame to Scotland or to Iceland or to Peru or to Tokyo and it would, as we've now discovered, tell us something about that place.
• 21:56
  But it's still your frame.
• 22:01
  And that's a good thing.
• 22:01
  That's a very generous thing to take your frame to other places because it sort of merges.
• 22:11
  I question that, I just... Sorry.
• 22:13
  I just feel like I want to live, like, 200 years and something,- I want to break out of this frame.
• 22:17
  - Okay.
• 22:21
  - Let's do it.
• 22:21
  - Okay, let's do it.
• 22:23
  Well, we will. I mean, if we want to live for 200 years, then we will. Let's do it.
• 22:27
  Because I, you know, the reason coming here is also to find, to stimulate myself.
• 22:31
  But, of course, I discover many beautiful things and...
• 22:35
  But then maybe- I need to accept that, right?
• 22:39
  - Well, let's talk about newness then.
• 22:44
  Okay, let's say what is it that's new in Memoria that you value.
• 22:51
  In terms of the experience of making it and in terms of if you can objectively describe the film itself, what the thing is itself.
• 23:04
  What's new for you?
• 23:06
  In fact, most things are new.
• 23:09
  - Okay.
• 23:09
  - Yeah.
• 23:12
  We made a sense of the timing and the relationship of how we, you know, us and time in the film and...
• 23:25
  - Hmm, it's hard to say.
• 23:25
  - You mean the rhythm?
• 23:28
  The rhythm and the idea of...
• 23:28
  human existence.
• 23:33
  But what news? You? Colombia?
• 23:36
  I don't know how to explain, it's such profound melancholy.
• 23:42
  Certain feelings and also acceptance in the end.
• 23:48
  Well, I suppose one thing that's a big leap for you is simply this thing of not being in the country that you were born in and grew up in.
• 23:58
  - My cushion, yeah.
• 23:58
  - Your cushion.
• 24:00
  And not only your cushion, but your social network, your social web, the web of language, the web of Thai people speaking Thai to each other and being able to express themselves.
• 24:13
  I mean, we don't have any of that in Memoria because we're dealing with someone who cannot express themselves very well in Spanish.
• 24:22
  So, it's all very minimal, the sort of...
• 24:25
  It reminds me of what Hitchcock said about, you know, you let the camera tell the story and the dialog will be atmosphere.
• 24:32
  - Ah.
• 24:32
  - It's Hitchcockian in that sense, because the spoken language is really not that important in Memoria.
• 24:39
  It's much less important than the experience.
• 24:43
  And she as a motor, as the portrait who's motoring it, is not very creative. She's receiving.
• 24:48
  She's more receptive than creative.
• 24:54
  - Mm-hmm.
• 24:54
  - And in your...
• 24:57
  Yeah, she's like water.
• 24:57
  She's just blend in... Yeah.
• 25:03
  And that is very, very interesting to me, and I know that that is very interesting to you as well as a, you know, as people, that state of water, and that attempt to live in the present.
• 25:18
  But to try and explore that in film, that's very new and very ambitious and really exciting.
• 25:29
  - Mm-hmm.
• 25:29
  - And I feel we've started with Memoria, and I think we want to go on to try and examine and trace it...
• 25:38
  - Right.
• 25:38
  - ..that feeling, that environment.
• 25:43
  It's more like an environmental project rather than a narrative project or...
• 25:50
  - It's a mindscape.
• 25:50
  - It's a mindscape. Exactly.
• 25:53
  So, that's super new.
• 25:53
  And that's super new.
• 25:56
  And when you think of, you know, your films that you've made in Thailand, they are, speaking as a non-Thai person, I feel when I'm watching them that there's a whole web of Thai...
• 26:13
  It's not just the language, but seeing the way in which people communicate.
• 26:16
  You're right. You're right.
• 26:16
  Yeah, that's element.
• 26:19
  No? There's something that really tied to that location and culture.
• 26:22
  And the history, but that as a non-Thai person, I'm learning and...
• 26:27
  A lot, yeah.
• 26:28
  or not understanding. And it's this feeling of a bedrock, like this, what we're getting in your stories is, you know, the tip of the iceberg, but under the water is this massive, you know, the reality of Thai social history, which, of course, you and your Thai colleagues know more about than I do.
• 26:55
  I think the core that I took it over is, I don't know if we can call Buddhism, but this philosophy of water, I think it present in Thai film, but maybe not as much as here because here is, how you say, is really singular.
• 27:17
  - Yeah.
• 27:17
  - The singular activity of just walking and discovering and that pronounced this element.
• 27:25
  And I don't know if you remember, I gave you this little book.
• 27:30
  Yes, which I carry with me always.
• 27:33
  Yeah. I think he talks about that.
• 27:35
  Yeah.
• 27:37
  Talk about being aware that you are water and you also connect it with everything. You are the sky, you're the trees, you're part of everything.
• 27:47
  Yeah.
• 27:49
  And I think that has something to do with Memoria as well. Yeah.
• 27:55
  Intermission.
• 27:58
  MUBI is a great streaming service, showing exceptional films from around the globe, all of them hand-picked by real people who really know movies.
• 28:07
  Every day, MUBI premieres a new film from iconic directors to emerging auteurs, there is always something new to discover.
• 28:16
  And if you're enjoying this conversation, we're happy to share that Memoria will stream exclusively on MUBI, starting this Friday, August 5, in many countries, including in most of Latin America, Germany, Italy, India and Turkey.
• 28:27
  More details are in the show notes.
• 28:32
  You can also stream many of the films we feature in the podcast.
• 28:36
  Just look for the collection called MUBI Podcast Encuentros on the Now Showing page.
• 28:42
  And to try MUBI free for 30 days, visit mubi.com/encuentros.
• 28:47
  That's M-U-B-I.com/encuentros for a whole month of great cinema.
• 28:55
  In this block, Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
• 28:58
  And Tilda Swinton talk about some of their favorite films.
• 29:03
  A film that I hope very much that MUBI is going to take an interest in...
• 29:08
  is Andrea Arnold's new film Cow, which is... It actually relates a lot to things that we've discussed this morning.
• 29:16
  It's a really beautiful film.
• 29:21
  I hesitate to call it a documentary.
• 29:24
  Rather like attachment to labels of any kind, I'm not keen to call a film anything particularly.
• 29:30
  It's the portrait of a cow on a dairy farm in England and her life.
• 29:40
  And. Yeah, it's really...
• 29:40
  it's shot at cow height.
• 29:47
  - So you are really with her.
• 29:47
  - Uh huh.
• 29:49
  All through it. Actually, the very first sequence is one of her calves being born.
• 29:54
  This calf is being born.
• 29:58
  Opens its eye for the first time into the lens of Andrea's camera.
• 30:03
  You can imagine what the end is, so I won't spoil it, but it's about the life of a cow.
• 30:09
  And it's very strong and very poetic and tough.
• 30:15
  - It was in Cannes, right?
• 30:15
  - It was in Cannes.
• 30:19
  No, for me, I... Hmm. I stopped seeing film for a while, somehow...
• 30:27
  So, my... how you say? My favorite ones are mostly old ones. Let me think.
• 30:34
  There's so many, though.
• 30:34
  I like The Conversation, by Coppola, 1974, and the fact that there's a sentence in the film that link to a murder of this couple, or about to, that what Gene Hackman think about, that I couldn't understand as a Thai.
• 30:58
  Because what would they talk about, you know? And then Gene Hackman also trying to find, you know, try to rewind and also to manipulate the machine to make the sound clearer.
• 31:15
  And even when he understood...
• 31:15
  so I kept watching this film over and over and then I discover other things in the film, you know, the craft of Coppola and, yeah, so and instantly it's about sound and it's about how, you know, the illusion, elusive quality of it.
• 31:36
  And yeah, so that's one.
• 31:39
  So another, which is not only one of my favorite films of all time, but also has recently had a new print made by the BFI is Michael Powell and Emmeric Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going, which I always describe as one of the greatest Scottish films ever made.
• 31:56
  But of course it's made by an Englishman and a Hungarian, and it's 1942 and it's set on the north west coast of Scotland, and it's about trying to get to an island.
• 32:09
  And it so happens that the island that they're trying to get to in the film is based on, in fact, there's a map in the film of the island.
• 32:20
  And even though in the film it's called Kiloran, the Map shows the island that I've known all my life, it's like a family island that my family has always gone to, my grandfather always went to.
• 32:37
  And it's a really, really beautiful film about Scottish romanticism, and it's about being blown off course because there's a storm and the things that this very willful young woman wants are interrupted because of nature.
• 32:59
  And she is brought into contact with a kind of mystical experience in Scotland, which is very dear to me.
• 33:09
  It's a really beautiful film and a war film made in the war, and there's a way of reading it also, which is very political.
• 33:18
  It's only on sort of second or third reading that one picks up on the fact that these wealthy English people have taken these places for rent in Scotland to avoid the bombing in London or the bombing in the north of England.
• 33:36
  And the impoverished aristocrats, Scottish aristocrats, are off fighting fascism.
• 33:40
  It's an incredible film.
• 33:45
  Another one for me is Tsai Ming-liang, Goodbye, Dragon Inn.
• 33:50
  It is a portrait of this old cinema in, I think in Taipei, that resonated with me very much because this giant theater, you know, that in my youth there are several of them, six or seven.
• 34:06
  And when I was, I don't know, when I was 30 years old, you know, they're all gone. Yeah.
• 34:15
  And we now have Cineplex.
• 34:15
  It's a smaller screen, different ritual.
• 34:19
  So Goodbye, Dragon Inn really links with those times in my life.
• 34:25
  And the film, you know, happened through the course of this one martial arts film, you know, from start to finish, you know, real time.
• 34:35
  And he used a real King Hu film and you see a glimpse of it sometime, sometime from the side.
• 34:44
  And the whole film is raining.
• 34:44
  You can hear the rain outside, the rain from inside. It is almost like it is never-ending tears.
• 34:57
  It's so moving for me and there's a few audiences in the theater, mysteries that sometimes appear, sometime disappear to do the kind of...
• 35:09
  How you call it?
• 35:09
  In the bathroom, you know, kind of checking one each other out and, you know, and some just disappear, sometimes disappear.
• 35:22
  They are like ghosts, popping in and out. And, yeah.
• 35:29
  I was just remembering that actually the first piece of work that you and I collaborated on- was our film festival in Yao Noi.
• 35:34
  - Right.
• 35:37
  In what year?
• 35:37
  I'm very bad at years.
• 35:39
  Oh, me too. So...
• 35:41
  I don't know.
• 35:43
  2011 or something?
• 35:46
  Yeah, well, it doesn't sound wrong.
• 35:46
  Yeah. Something around then. Yeah.
• 35:49
  And we co-curated a film festival on this island, Yao Noi, off Thailand.
• 35:56
  And one of the days we had an open air cinema for the village in a rice paddy.
• 36:02
  - You remember?
• 36:02
  - Yeah.
• 36:03
  And then we had these actors, quite well-known actors, came down from Bangkok and they lived dubbed it.
• 36:10
  And it was an absolute riot.
• 36:10
  It was fantastic.
• 36:14
  It was like a complete...
• 36:14
  It was like a rock concert, wasn't it?
• 36:18
  Hmm. Performance.
• 36:19
  It was a huge performance.
• 36:19
  And in this rice paddy and this field with all the villagers there, it was great.
• 36:27
  - That's a mad festival.
• 36:27
  - It was a mad festival.
• 36:29
  - How did we do it?
• 36:29
  - It was great.
• 36:32
  We even had, we called it Film on the Rocks, and on the last night we had this film projected against these beautiful rocks.
• 36:39
  We all went out on boats and we were on a floating platform watching film projected on the rocks.
• 36:47
  It was insane.
• 36:49
  You were showing...
• 36:51
  I think I showed another of my favorite films, which is a film from 1933 by Henry Hathaway, Peter Ibbetson with Gary Cooper, which was a film fetish of the surrealists.
• 37:05
  It's about about meeting in dreams.
• 37:09
  It was actually, it was a little seed of Memoria as well, because it was about people who are irrevocably separated and cannot be together in the flesh, meeting in each other's dreams and sending each other's messages in the dreams.
• 37:24
  - It's so sexy.
• 37:24
  - Yeah.
• 37:28
  And not sexy at the same time, it feel like...
• 37:31
  I think these two characters is like friends, no?
• 37:34
  They meet when...
• 37:34
  They basically fall in love when they're eight and then they're separated and then they find each other again. And then they're separated again forever.
• 37:45
  But they meet in their dreams. Yeah.
• 37:45
  It's a sort of ghost story, in a way.
• 37:49
  I like when he walk out of the jail cells.
• 37:49
  Like super special effects for me.
• 37:55
  Yeah. 1933. And there was a lot of dancing at that film festival as well.
• 38:00
  It's like from another, talk about memories. Wow, that feels a long time ago.
• 38:05
  And I like Jarman's Blue, actually.
• 38:08
  I saw it when I was in Chicago and I didn't understand much.
• 38:14
  I mean, it was like a dream to me.
• 38:14
  A good dream. It's a flurry of memories.
• 38:20
  And the thing is, during the projection, the film caught fire.
• 38:26
  - That used to happen a lot with Derek.
• 38:26
  - Really?
• 38:29
  That happened when we showed The Last Of England in Venice and everybody thought it was part of the film.
• 38:36
  I thought that because at a certain point, it's not blue, it's transform, you know, like changed color and then amber and then like, wow.
• 38:51
  Yeah. And silent.
• 38:51
  So, it was an experience.
• 38:57
  Well, you know, Blue was originally a concept.
• 39:01
  It wasn't, it was an experience.
• 39:01
  It wasn't a film.
• 39:04
  - We did a series of Blue concerts.
• 39:04
  - Right.
• 39:06
  And then after the fact, we, you know, Derek decided to make it as a film.
• 39:12
  He was losing his sight at that time, and Blue was kind of all he could see.
• 39:16
  And actually, Simon Fisher Turner, who's my great friend and comrade who did all the music for Derek's films, he and I are working together still, forever.
• 39:28
  There are going to be some Blue concerts in December.
• 39:30
  Listen. Listen to the sound of the wind in that fantastic tree up there.
• 39:36
  - Yeah. So, Blue goes on.
• 39:36
  - This December?
• 39:38
  - Yeah.
• 39:38
  - We're going to do some more.
• 39:40
  - Where at?
• 39:40
  - I think in Paris, and I'm not quite sure. But, it rolls on.
• 39:51
  Part Two.
• 39:55
  It's like a rumble...
• 40:01
  from the core of the earth.
• 40:06
  And then it shrinks.
• 40:12
  You just listened to an excerpt of Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
• 40:17
  How did you feel when you first saw the film?
• 40:21
  I think it's a cut that's really similar to the final film.
• 40:25
  Yeah, it's similar.
• 40:25
  It was similar in terms of its shape.
• 40:28
  There were some, you know, effects that weren't there.
• 40:31
  The effects at the end weren't there.
• 40:33
  They were indicated, but they weren't fully there. And of course, it has to be said, it's one thing to see on a relatively small screen and it's another thing to see it on that beautiful screen in Cannes with that sound system.
• 40:45
  So I feel very blessed to have had that as my second screening.
• 40:51
  And, you know, of course, we have to urge everybody to go and see it on as big a screen as possible.
• 40:57
  I did feel that the experience in Cannes was like my first actually, because I tried to think why, you know, it's different from when I checked in the theater in Thailand. And I think maybe it's because of the people.
• 41:12
  - Yeah.
• 41:12
  - Sitting among, you know, the crowd and together, you know, anticipating this and join the journey. Yeah.
• 41:22
  I mean, I've sat in that room many times and the attention of the audience for that screening was quite exceptional.
• 41:31
  It was so quiet that I wondered that whether they were going to suddenly all stand up and walk out because they were horrified.
• 41:40
  I mean, it was... Or there was suddenly going to be a collective snore.
• 41:44
  I mean, it was one or the other because they were so still, and so locked.
• 41:50
  I now realize because the response was so welcoming afterwards, but I think they were in an experience so totally. And of course, I hope that might have been the case two years ago when we were hoping to show the film, but this particular Cannes, that particular audience this year, having not been able to show it last year when we were intended to show it, Cannes having been postponed and this audience was so grateful.
• 42:21
  I felt. I mean, I felt it throughout the entire festival.
• 42:24
  But there's something very beautiful going on right now, I have to say, with big cinema.
• 42:27
  People were so nervous for a while that we were never going to be able to go back into the big cinema.
• 42:35
  And so to go back in, everyone's been so thirsty for so long, they're like drinking it up.
• 42:42
  It's like we were a kid again, no?
• 42:45
  Totally. Enchantment is the word.
• 42:45
  I felt that it was an enchanted audience and that's a great spirit to go into this particular film, because this film is really asking of you that you leave everything outside and you just dive in.
• 43:02
  You told me during the shooting that, you know, in other film making, maybe Hollywood or something, is not like this, you know, the way that you or Jeanne or other people work, you know. But how do you feel?
• 43:20
  Because for me, I feel like a friend, but still, I know that you invest so much time for this film, you know, to be in Colombia for, I don't know, months and go to Phayao and live.
• 43:37
  Well, you know, I mean, it's for me and this is a very, you know, quite an intense thing to say, but for me to be working with you and to work in the way that we are working now, regularly, I mean, not just working on Memoria, but now continuing our work together and talking about the future.
• 43:56
  For me, it's not only the revelation of something new, but it's also a return to my roots in film making. Because the way I started to work as a filmmaker was with Derek Jarman in a very similar way, and I worked with him for nine years in this way.
• 44:14
  And so it's a really blessed thing after all this time and all these sort of skirmishes and interesting adventures I've been on with other filmmakers and in a variety of really disparate film making environments, it's a homecoming for me to work with you.
• 44:33
  It's all the way in which you work, the way in which you make it possible for me to work and all our colleagues, it's the thing that I started with and it's the thing that I love the most.
• 44:47
  And so it's both.
• 44:47
  What's old about it is very natural and very comfortable.
• 44:51
  But what's new about it is just this revelation that it's still there. And so for me, it's beyond a blessing to be working with you.
• 45:04
  It's about, the film making, what Derek taught all of us, didn't teach us, but just exposed us to, was that it's all about the process and it's about this community.
• 45:14
  It's a collective experience, not just collective with the filmmakers, but also with the audience.
• 45:23
  And that's what you bring with you and what you're interested in, as I understand it, your relationship with your audience and your relationship with all of us as filmmakers with you is very similar, very, very akin to the way Derek as a director, which again, is a word that I feel I have a kind of ambivalence about.
• 45:43
  Because one thing, again, that we learned with Derek was that we are all filmmakers.
• 45:49
  And yes, at a certain point one has to figure out, you know, you're the director and I'm the performer and someone else is the costume designer, and someone else is going to hold the boom.
• 45:59
  But actually, we are all filmmakers and we're all working together.
• 46:04
  And that's the thing that I really cherish.
• 46:08
  Probably the reason that I am still interested in working, I suppose.
• 46:13
  And I was thinking, what Tilda feel, you know?
• 46:17
  Did you feel lost as I was, you know?
• 46:17
  That, what is this film? You know.
• 46:24
  What am I doing here?
• 46:26
  Or being in this tunnel, which is very hard for me, I admit that is, I lose many time this direction in that place because it is full of dust and sound and something that I sometimes couldn't focus.
• 46:45
  And I was always thinking about you.
• 46:51
  Yeah. In particular, like, how would you...
• 46:55
  What do you anchor on doing the shoot?
• 46:59
  - Yeah.
• 46:59
  - I think, since you used the word, if I felt lost I, I enjoy feeling lost.
• 47:08
  I think I found that and I really enjoyed...
• 47:15
  Yeah, the lack of...
• 47:18
  That we had, that you gave me and that we together encouraged ourselves to be modest in our gestures and to look for modest gestures and to really enjoy the simplicity of just presence.
• 47:35
  For me, that's such a relief.
• 47:38
  And as I say, I think it's not a relief because it's something new that I've never experienced.
• 47:43
  I think it's something that I really, really like and I've always loved and is something very, very old-established for me.
• 47:55
  It means that I can be light, just be light, not have to carry...
• 47:59
  I mean, it reconnected me with a sense of quietness.
• 48:08
  I mean, I'm, as you know, knowing each other, being close friends, I'm actually a quiet person, and in the world of film making, I've had to encourage myself to be more connected and more social than I think naturally I would.
• 48:31
  And so Jessica was like an oasis of quietness for me, and that also goes for her lack of biographical detail or any of that sort of burden, just her being this ghost presence moving through spaces, for me, that was really just delicious.
• 48:53
  I loved that. So, yes, if I felt lost, that's something I want to feel.
• 48:57
  Hmm.
• 48:58
  Don't really like knowing what I'm doing.
• 49:02
  I try not to as much as possible.
• 49:05
  For me it's a discovery because I know you as you, and when I wrote it, I don't know who this person is.
• 49:14
  You know, there's a link of Jessica Holland in I Walked With A Zombie, but of course, here she's more active.
• 49:23
  And then I think I kind of slowly discover together, or maybe with this character that you deliver for me, you know, two spaces and...
• 49:30
  I don't know. How do you feel?
• 49:34
  Maybe you didn't know either this person.
• 49:37
  It's funny because I realize, because we were together in Doha, in Qatar at the Qumra, the sort of encounter workshop there.
• 49:49
  And we were developing all the time this, it wasn't even the ideas, it was the environment.
• 49:57
  We were always looking for a kind of way of working.
• 50:01
  And I remember there talking in general about my kind of sheepishness because I was asked to give a so-called masterclass about performance, or even worse, being an actor, which is something that I feel very awkward about because I don't really identify as an actor because I have nothing really to say about acting.
• 50:23
  I'm not really interested in it, even though I'm aware that I have been popping up in films, roughly speaking, described as an actor for over 30 years.
• 50:33
  So I realized, you know, I haven't really got much of a leg to stand on in this, but I tried to explain in the course of this masterclass what I really felt about... not even what my task is, but what my interest is. And I remember you finding that useful in developing the idea of how we might work together, and also what this portrait of Jessica might be, so that she's not a character.
• 51:02
  I mean, I think of her as a predicament, really.
• 51:06
  It's the portrait of someone in a predicament, and that's it.
• 51:11
  There's really nothing else that we really provide.
• 51:14
  We provide a series of circumstances.
• 51:17
  She's an alien in the sense that she's an outsider in the country.
• 51:22
  She also, very importantly, doesn't speak the language fluently.
• 51:27
  I find that very significant and a very fruitful and rich territory.
• 51:34
  I'm, as you know, very interested in articulacy and I like the portrait of someone who can't express themselves with words very well, because then it opens up a whole vista of other ways of expressing, with movement, with silence, with the way in which they listen, the way in which they respond.
• 51:56
  It makes them much less active in a way.
• 51:59
  And so... Having talked about this and having realized that this was something that in general I was interested in, I think you then took that, after Qumra, after this experience in Doha, and you kind of, then you developed the path, let's say, not the character, but the path of the journey of Jessica.
• 52:23
  And I was so grateful to you that you didn't even... you weren't interested in explaining anything about her history or, you know, there's very, very tangential details about we know that she's been an orchid farmer somewhere in a finca outside Medellin.
• 52:38
  That's all we know.
• 52:42
  And there's talk of her husband and there's talk of his death certificate- and he's referred to twice.
• 52:47
  - That's it.
• 52:50
  That's it.
• 52:50
  And I love that because that...
• 52:54
  just brings up so much possibility.
• 52:58
  Es como...
• 53:02
  una bola...
• 53:05
  enorme...
• 53:07
  y concreto que cae en un fondo de metal.
• 53:16
  Rodeada... de agua de mar.
• 53:23
  You just listened to an excerpt ofMemoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
• 53:29
  I mean, I've said many times and it continues to be true, that I think when I think of performances, when I think of what, what present, it's more presences.
• 53:42
  What presence is, what cinematic presence is. You know, sometimes I'm asked, what's the most inspiring performance you can think of?
• 53:48
  I always think of the donkey in Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar.
• 53:52
  I think of the, you know, Bresson talked about models, he didn't talk about actors. And he was looking for a kind of animal presence.
• 54:02
  I mean, those are my words.
• 54:04
  I'm putting them into his mouth.
• 54:04
  I'm looking for an animal presence.
• 54:09
  And when I see the kind of presence that the donkey, or let's face it, probably there were several donkeys, but they all go, they all add together in the shooting of the film to add up to the performance of Balthazar.
• 54:25
  There's something that...
• 54:28
  There's a noise in the background but I'm going to keep going because I'm going to because everybody knows that we're sitting in a garden in Bogota.
• 54:36
  Just wanted to mention! But that the presence of that donkey, all that donkey is doing is experiencing.
• 54:44
  - Experiencing.
• 54:44
  - Just experiencing.
• 54:47
  And that's really good, there's something the audience gets.
• 54:50
  - Mm-hmm.
• 54:50
  - From that which I love, the opportunity to try and give them in a portrait of something like Jessica.
• 55:00
  And I hope that when the audience is watching Jessica, they at least stop wondering about what she's thinking or...
• 55:10
  or what her story is.
• 55:10
  I hope that at a certain point, they give that up and they just, they can be with her and they can just, their ears open and they listen and they look and they just experience with her.
• 55:26
  Yeah, I think animal is a big point too, because I'm reading Guru Naam, the philosopher, and he mentioned about being, just experiencing that you mentioned.
• 55:41
  And sometimes I wonder if it's possible, you know, to live our life like that without memory, actually, without concept, you know, that shape us how we approach situations.
• 55:56
  . And I don't know, I think during this time, last past year,- I, and you two, were with dogs.
• 56:02
  - Yeah.
• 56:05
  Our dogs. And for me, I, I observe them.
• 56:09
  Oh, they are teachers. I mean, really, that's again, it sounds like a highly kind of pretentious thing to say, but truly, practically,- they are our teachers.
• 56:16
  - Yeah.
• 56:18
  And, you know, another another sort of key for me in touching this kind of experience is my experience of grief.
• 56:28
  And I remember when we were developing Memoria you had the autobiographical contribution of your bang and your insomnia, and during the years that we were developing the project, I experienced the death of my father, in particular, my mother, in fact, also my mother.
• 56:52
  And I talked to you about what grief, what the experience of grief was for me.
• 57:00
  And I think that informed the project because in a nutshell, my, I think, you know, everybody experiences grief differently. But for me, it was the first thing I could say was that it was as if all narratives stopped.
• 57:21
  Mm-hmm. What do you mean?
• 57:23
  I mean, that's the trauma for me.
• 57:27
  In the first instance of bereavement is that I lost my attachment to narrative.
• 57:39
  I lost my way with how the days, the years, I couldn't visualize, you know?
• 57:46
  So the person dies, and I could not figure out what the next week was going to be, what the next year was going to, what the next month was going to be.
• 57:59
  I was, in a way, brought into the present moment by grief.
• 58:04
  It was really productive in that way.
• 58:07
  It was very practical. Was, you know, and whenever anybody I know is bereaved, I always suggest to them that they go really carefully with themselves through every hour of every day, because that feeling of discombobulation, that feeling of dislocation is very strong and it can be really confusing.
• 58:27
  Now, as I understand it, this is what this pandemic the last two years, let's face it, of the pandemic has been for all of us.
• 58:36
  It's been a sort of grief experience because we haven't been able to stay connected to, oh, next summer, I'm going to go on holiday in Bearitz.
• 58:50
  Next winter my daughter is going to get married.
• 58:54
  All of that has just been cut.
• 58:54
  And we have been taken back to living each day, each hour at a time.
• 59:02
  And I think a lot of people have found that really challenging and frightening.
• 59:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 59:09
  Because society kind of lives by its web, doesn't it?
• 59:14
  So, I've experienced the last two years as sort of grief lite, if you like.
• 59:20
  Yeah.
• 59:22
  But when you grieve for someone, you know, I think in your case, were you also thinking about death, like dying in terms of your own mortality?
• 59:37
  Yeah. And I mean, I'm talking specifically. I mean, I've experienced grieving for people younger.
• 59:45
  I think grieving for people who die earlier in their lives is a different thing.
• 59:53
  I experience it differently because, of course, then what you're dealing with is carrying the fantasy of, oh, they died too young.
• 1:00:01
  And then you have all this fantasy of what they would have done as an old person. And, you know, there's, in a way that's a security blanket because you can retain that fantasy and it sort of keeps you warm for a bit, sometimes out of a sense of outrage or a sense of...
• 1:00:16
  But you keep the narrative going in your mind, Oh, what a wonderful old man Derek Jarman would have been or how many films he would have made or whatever.
• 1:00:27
  But when someone is very, very old, that's a different challenge.
• 1:00:32
  And it's almost as sharp a challenge, I find, because you don't have the comfort.
• 1:00:37
  When my father was 93, he was at the end of the track. I mean, you couldn't say, Oh, you know, gosh, what he would have done with another 20 years.
• 1:00:48
  No. I mean, he was really an animal reaching the end of the line.
• 1:00:56
  And that, of course, ties you in as well.
• 1:01:01
  You go, Oh, I hope I get, you know, I hope I go out like that.
• 1:01:06
  I mean, that's kind of, he had a blessed passing.
• 1:01:10
  It was beautiful. And I had, you know, I read the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying a lot while I was with him, while he was dying.
• 1:01:20
  And it's a very torturous and sort of, you know, it's a piece of work.
• 1:01:28
  Right. Right. But it also can be liberating- to embrace that we, it's the nature.
• 1:01:33
  - Yeah.
• 1:01:37
  How you say? Because I think that is such a powerful event.
• 1:01:41
  - Yeah.
• 1:01:41
  - That we will all get there but we try not to think about it all the time,- but, but...
• 1:01:47
  - And that's such a waste.
• 1:01:50
  Right. But, I mean if we accept it- and we think about it.
• 1:01:52
  - Yeah.
• 1:01:54
  Or practice even, you know, like a holiday or something we look forward to.
• 1:01:58
  It will kill this myth.
• 1:02:01
  Something to prepare for, you know.
• 1:02:01
  And of course, again, it's banal to say because it's so obvious, but the closest anybody who's had this experience that I was so blessed to have, of helping somebody to die, as it were, to support them while they went through the process, is the closest thing it comes to, in my experience, is birth.
• 1:02:24
  - It's exactly like waiting for a child.
• 1:02:24
  - Yeah.
• 1:02:28
  You know, very, very, very similar.
• 1:02:28
  You're sort of waiting for this...
• 1:02:33
  transformation to take place and for this beginning and...
• 1:02:38
  Right, right.
• 1:02:40
  And as you say, it brings up this question in your mind, how do I want to, how do I want to go and what can I do to prepare for that?
• 1:02:50
  It's so link with what you mentioned before about you don't feel like you're an actor, you know, because I, you know, there's a monk that I listen to and, you know, he mentioned about that we shouldn't tie ourselves to anything.
• 1:03:08
  And that's so beautiful, you know, that when someone asked me, who are you?
• 1:03:11
  You know, if I can, I don't want to say, you know, that I'm a filmmaker or I'm an artist, you know, because you're tied to that identity, you know.
• 1:03:23
  Exactly.
• 1:03:24
  And then when you get whatever order or you incapable of doing what you do or you think your identity is, you become, you collapse, you know, you just lose this self that, oh, one day I cannot make a film and what should I live for, you know?
• 1:03:43
  So, that's the danger of the attachment to this idea of career.
• 1:03:48
  - Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:48
  - And that is the same, no?
• 1:03:52
  If we just accept that, you know, we don't, we just not identify with this body, with this idea of we are we, you know.
• 1:04:02
  But if we just liberate, like, okay, we are the trees, we are part of this environment, you know. Yeah. And then one day we just change.
• 1:04:10
  Yeah, we transform.
• 1:04:10
  But then again, we are all dying all the time, every day.
• 1:04:13
  That's the point, is that it's all ongoing.
• 1:04:19
  It's not like there's some kind of hard edge to any of this.
• 1:04:23
  - Right, right.
• 1:04:23
  - There's not there's no decision.
• 1:04:25
  I think there's so much attachment to the idea of will, that we have it in our power to decide to become old or to decide not to become old or to decide to recognize that we're dying.
• 1:04:40
  It's happening.
• 1:04:40
  You know, it's never-ending.
• 1:04:43
  Ch-ch-changes. It's just all we've got.
• 1:04:46
  I also want to make a film about this, again, to really... Actually, it's for a reminder.
• 1:04:55
  Note to self reminder and show to people.
• 1:04:59
  But I think that children know this, again, it's like what I was saying about, you know, finding working with you is for me a reminder of something very elemental for me.
• 1:05:09
  I think children know all the things we're talking about.
• 1:05:14
  They know about changes because they have to experience changes again on a daily basis and they have to have a kind of...
• 1:05:23
  Yeah, humility about change because...
• 1:05:25
  and then this point comes when society encourages us to become more fixed or to attach ourselves to things and take pride in our ability to be willful and in control.
• 1:05:37
  But it's really a mirage.
• 1:05:37
  It's not true. We're not in control.
• 1:05:41
  Right, right. And to know that is for me, happiness.
• 1:05:45
  Complete happiness.
• 1:05:45
  And it is connected to what we were talking about, about the state of Jessica in this film, this thing of her being like water, her being, and I use this phrase, you know, for a reason, out of control.
• 1:06:02
  She is not actually...
• 1:06:05
  she doesn't know when this bang is coming, she knows that she wants to buy a fridge.
• 1:06:08
  That's almost... That's it! That's probably on her list of willful actions.
• 1:06:18
  And the fact that she goes to visit Jeanne Balibar's portrait...
• 1:06:23
  that's a decision she makes but even that is introduced to her by someone else.
• 1:06:28
  She's following the river but she decides she wants to go and buy a fridge.
• 1:06:32
  That's almost the only thing really that she decides in the film.
• 1:06:38
  But she's confronting with death all the time, no?
• 1:06:41
  And, in fact resisted a bit, you know, when she went to buy a fridge for this dying orchid and, you know, look at this skeleton.
• 1:06:48
  You know, there's always a reminder of time.
• 1:06:50
  - Yeah.
• 1:06:50
  - You know, of demise.
• 1:06:53
  Yeah. So, I think you can look at it in different ways- and that's nice to discover.
• 1:06:57
  - Yeah.
• 1:07:00
  But there's also this very, very, very tender moment for me in the film is when Elkin, the older Hernan, is by the river when he dies in front of her and she asks him what was it like?
• 1:07:16
  And he says what?
• 1:07:16
  And she says death.
• 1:07:21
  And he says, I just stopped.
• 1:07:24
  - I mean...
• 1:07:24
  - Nothing.
• 1:07:26
  Nothing, just stopped.
• 1:07:28
  It's incredibly resonant that.
• 1:07:28
  It's the wisest thing I can imagine anybody saying about death.
• 1:07:34
  That's what it is. Just stop.
• 1:07:38
  And for her, that's a real contribution.
• 1:07:43
  Because if we're reading her as someone who is negotiating grief, it's really useful for her to have that perspective.
• 1:07:54
  Right, right.
• 1:08:12
  For me and for the team member, it is such a gift when we were shooting many scenes and the last scene in particular, is that the last scene we shot of you?
• 1:08:27
  It was the last scene that we shot.
• 1:08:29
  - Emotional long take.
• 1:08:29
  - Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:08:32
  And, you know, I don't know how you did it, but I mean, I guided you, but I feel that is not me, it is something that, how you say?
• 1:08:42
  That all of us, you know, we were sitting there and I remember when we say cut, many of the team are in tears.
• 1:08:51
  You know, it was such an experience to witness that. Yeah.
• 1:08:58
  And then when cut, you just come back.
• 1:09:03
  You just went to see the piglets.
• 1:09:05
  Yes. Oh, yes.
• 1:09:05
  That was so wonderful that while we were shooting over those days, all these piglets were being born.
• 1:09:11
  I think eventually it was something like 26.
• 1:09:15
  I mean, this massive sow.
• 1:09:18
  - Never ending.
• 1:09:18
  - Never ending.
• 1:09:19
  And in between every take, I would go and see how many more there were.
• 1:09:23
  But it was also...
• 1:09:23
  seemingly it felt absolutely organic, that this scene was very much about death somehow.
• 1:09:32
  But there were these piglets being born.
• 1:09:34
  And pigs, of course, are, you know, among my more favorite animals on the planet and I identify with pigs.
• 1:09:47
  I don't know if it makes any sense.
• 1:09:47
  I don't know what you can do with that.
• 1:09:53
  But we never had a chance to talk like this. Thank you for...
• 1:09:57
  - Thank you.
• 1:09:57
  - Actually, it's fantastic.
• 1:10:00
  I think it's great. You've been very, very generous with everyone.
• 1:10:04
  - And, you know...
• 1:10:04
  - Yeah.
• 1:10:07
  Every conversation Joey and I have is more seeds for another film.
• 1:10:11
  So thank you for massaging even more the next one.
• 1:10:20
  Encuentros, a podcast by MUBI, an ever-changing collection of incredible hand-picked cinema.
• 1:10:24
  A new film every single day, a new conversation each episode.
• 1:10:36
  Check out season one and two of MUBI podcast Encuentros, a podcast in Spanish by MUBI and La Corriente del Golfo Podcast.
• 1:10:44
  12 episodes that pair off prominent Latin American voices who engage in lively, in-depth conversations about cinema and culture.
• 1:10:52
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• 1:10:56
  You can also listen to it at LaCorrientedelGolfo.net where you will find a series of complimentary materials.
• 1:11:04
  We hope you enjoyed this special episode of Encuentros, by MUBI, our very first podcast in English, with Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tilda Swinton.
• 1:11:14
  Idea: Efe Cakarel, Sandra Gómez, Jon Barrenechea and Ricardo Giraldo.
• 1:11:20
  Production and Conceptual Supervision: Ricardo Hidalgo.
• 1:11:24
  Executive Producers: Efe Cakarel, Sandra Gómez, Jon Barrenechea, Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal and Paula Amor.
• 1:11:33
  Sound design: Javier Umpiérrez.
• 1:11:36
  Music score: Andrés Solís.
• 1:11:38
  Research, script and transcriptions: Andrés Suárez.
• 1:11:42
  Research, script and transcriptions: Production Coordinator, Script and Transcriptions: Fernando Peña.
• 1:11:46
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• 1:11:49
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• 1:11:52
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• 1:12:00
  Voice: This conversation was recorded at Hotel Casa Legado in Bogota.
• 1:12:06
  Voice: La Corriente del Golfo Podcast and MUBI, copyright 2022.