Score: 3
Director: Kim Quy Bui
Cast: Mong Giao Vu, Thu Trang Nguyen, Van Thai Nguyen, Duc Thanh Dao
Premiere: September 1, 2023
In memory and myth, a young widow travels from a living world into the ghostly town where her ancestors once gathered. She carries the ashes of her husband, a construction worker, seeking connection with a past that continues to shape the present. Parallel to this journey, a man steps into the shadowed realm to recover identity papers held by his late wife, a tender yet haunting reminder that names and memories persist beyond death. A third thread follows an elderly couple who, unwilling to surrender to the crematorium, decide to stage their own farewell while still alive. Together, these connected stories form a mosaic that examines how a changing Vietnam negotiates death, tradition, and urban life.
The film unfolds as a three-part meditation inspired by the director’s personal experiences with loss, especially the passing of a father. It uses Vietnam’s funeral rites not as ritual display but as narrative scaffolding to explore a nation rapidly urbanizing, where old customs fade and new pressures rise. The audience is invited to observe how communities adapt, what is gained, and what is lost when the living attempt to hold onto meaning in the face of modernization. The journey from rural memory to city bustle becomes a lens on identity, family, and the fragile balance between remembrance and progress.
Memoryland offers a study in atmosphere rather than straightforward plot. The imagery—desolate towns, empty streets, abandoned construction sites, and ruined structures—serves as a language of its own. It communicates the tension between quiet, rural spaces and the kinetic pulse of urban development, revealing a society negotiating displacement, economic shifts, and the emotional toll of change. The director’s approach privileges mood, symbolism, and sensory detail, inviting viewers to feel the weight of loss as it manifests in landscapes as much as in lives. In this sense, the film becomes a quiet examination of how people cope with pain, trauma, and the pressures exerted by technology and finance as they reshape daily existence.
What emerges is a contemplative, often enigmatic portrait of a country in transition. The visuals emphasize contrast: open fields give way to construction zones; traditional funeral rituals sit beside modern bureaucratic processes; and intimate grief confronts impersonal urban demands. Through these juxtapositions, the film suggests that memory is not simply a repository of the past but a dynamic force that informs choices about living with loss. The cinematic language—laden with symbolic images and restrained pacing—encourages viewers to assemble meaning from fragments, much like the characters assemble pieces of a life after death. The result is a thoughtful narrative about resilience, family bonds, and the enduring human need to connect with those who are gone.
While some viewers may find the storytelling opaque at times, the film’s strength lies in its ability to evoke mood and memory. The settings themselves become characters: places once full of purpose now quiet, structures standing as witnesses to time’s passage, and spaces where past and present converge. The interplay between memory and modernity is rendered with care, offering a portrait of a nation negotiating its identity in an era of rapid transformation. The film invites audiences to consider what is gained when communities preserve memory and what risks accompany the push toward progress. It is a meditation on how people endure the loss that accompanies change and how they continue to honor those who are gone while moving forward with hope.