The Sound of Silence
- Vaishnavi Hemant Sarda
- Nov 30, 2021
- 3 min read
When you think of short films, you characterise them as being short. Short, shorter than your average, run of the mill 3-hour productions. But there’s truth in believing that short films aren’t merely bite-sized versions of a full-length feature film. Short films live and breathe on their own accord, free of influence from any other narrative form. They need neither the crutches of conflict or character arcs or even dialogues for that matter – which makes it basically everything we thought defined any and all visual storytelling.
So when we say short films challenge all the standard narrative models of their long-form siblings, we must factor in what drives stories forward in them. Is it just the word-heavy, emotion-ridden dialogues? You’d be surprised to know, (it is) not. Short films can run for dialogue-less minutes for the entirety of their duration if it is the creative choice of its makers. And yet, the relationship between sound and the tightly-wound story cannot be called anything less than stirring.
Silence in film has long been employed to arouse various kinds of emotions in various kinds of films. Filmic silence, contrary to popular belief is not a layer subtracted from the film, but another one added. It is a layer of characters that remain quiet for the most part; who let their hunt for specific sounds and their natural atmospheric sounds do all the talking instead. There is hardly even music, if at all. How then, is the Indianness of our cinema reconstructed in culture-specific short film stories that are sans monologues or dialogues? Is there any politics behind designing such silence?
Here, we follow 5 silent films from contemporary short filmmakers from India to see how stories are given a ‘voice’ without necessarily having any voices in them:
1. Meal (2020)
Adil Hussain-starrer, ‘Meal’ by Abhiroop Basu uses the unique method of portraying the fragility of each of its character’s states of mind via specific sounds that crop up when they’re in-frame, as opposed to the use of catchphrases or lines. A pressure-cooker hissing, a wheelchair moving, the chanting of angry slogans out on the streets...everything clues you in on the communal metaphor of chaos (both internal and external) present in the story until it finally boils over to its climax.
2. Kaarigar (2020)
Sweeper of 3 awards at the Calcutta International Film Festival 2020, this silent film by Shubham Shourya takes you along the journey of a ‘kaarigar’ (meaning artisan) working at a garment factory. Just as the sounds of several hundred sewing machines start to rope you in, the protagonist is hurt by a needle. The audiovisual marriage of a bloodied finger and an unsettling background score – work the magic of a reality check. The mundaneness of his life has sucked his voice dry, and he wears a burden on his shoulders while you wear the trousers he makes for little return. Yet again here, silence is a tool as expressive as ever.
3. Mann Ke Pankh (2019)
Manu O B and Arjun Krishna in collaboration, bring you this 3-minute long reel run, that quite simplistically wants to tell the story of a local boy and his never-ending desires. A story that is so simple in its essence, and a universal experience too – draws you in effortlessly even without any dialogues for a stimulating effect. There is much room for meaning-making in the ambient score which is throughout – a part of his action itself. The film is then neatly bookended on a similar audiovisual note to what it begins with.
4. Jenny (2020)
The story of a barista called Jenny and a blind man, Jacob – inspired by real-life blind-deaf couple Stephen and Mary Lindpop from Toronto, is brought to your screens by Vaibhav Mahadev. With careful attention to detail and the perfect whimsical background score – this short film combines various non-verbal elements that help you understand how deaf-blind persons communicate using tactile signing, in the most heartwarming way.
5. Sisak (2017)
India’s first LGBTQ+ silent short film, Faraz Arif Ansari’s ‘Sisak’ is a story told without any words. As a young man shares one too many glances with an older man on his daily commute, the chemistry between the two starts intensifying. There is an initial sense of, and then the ultimate expression of vulnerability by both of them at the taboos that surround same-sex relationships in India. A palpable atmosphere of the running local train and plenty of cues that show the mutual yearning of the two men for each other (and sans words, at that!) – aptly explore their growing intimacy in a world that forbids it.
Here’s where you can find these fantastic shorts:
1. Meal
2. Kaarigar
3. Mann Ke Pankh
4. Jenny
5. Sisak
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