After his critically-acclaimed “Memoria,” filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul had revealed plans to shoot his next film in Sri Lanka (via Metrograph).
Tilda Swinton, who starred in “Memoria”, has now confirmed, via Les Inrockuptibles, that she spent the last eight months in Sri Lanka filming Weerasethakul’s new film. A surprising revelation given that I thought the project was still in development.
Weerasethakul has hinted that the film would be inspired by “2001: A Space Odyssey” author Arthur C. Clarke’s life “He lived and died in Sri Lanka, and one of his books, The Fountains of Paradise, is set in a fictional land based on a Sri Lankan landscape,” the director said.
Speaking on its length, we might be in store for the longest film of his career, “I wrote a treatment for a three- or four-hour movie, just from my imagination, from what I dream about,” he said.
“When you talk about 90 minutes, it’s a comfortable length. The human attention span is 90 minutes, and the dream cycle is also 90 minutes. To make it longer is like a challenge: how to create a journey where you don’t feel trapped by this human, biological requirement.”
Either you love Weerasethakul’s style of filmmaking or you hate it. There’s really no in between. Weerasethakul, whose fascinating “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall Past Lives” won the Palme d’Or back in 2010, has been a cinematic mainstay ever since 2004’s “Tropical Malady.”
His films play out in these wide-lensed frames, weird in nature, and surrounded by an infatuation for the unknowns of nature and dreams — all laid out in unconventional narrative structures that defy conventional perspectives.