After his critically-acclaimed “Memoria,” filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul had revealed plans to shoot his next film in Sri Lanka (via Metrograph). It’s called “The Fountains of Paradise.”
Tilda Swinton, who starred in “Memoria”, confirmed, that she spent the last eight months of 2023 in Sri Lanka filming Weerasethakul’s new film. A surprising revelation given that I thought the project was still in development.
Weerasethakul has stated that the film is 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.
It’s now being reported that Weerasethakul is aiming for “Fountains of Paradise” to be close to 4 hours … it would, by far, be the lengthiest film of his career. “Memoria,” his longest to date, was 136 minutes.
Hey, 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.