Film: Silence

So - in honour of St. Patrick's Day, I guess - all this month, the Irish-language tv channel, TG4 (which doesn't exclusively broadcast Irish-language programmes) is showing Irish films on Monday and Saturday nights. Some of which, handily for me, I've known about for a while but never actually gotten around to seeing. Like tonight's offering.

Silence is a film advertised as being about a sound recordist, living in Berlin, who - seemingly sick of the hustle and bustle - drives back to his native Donegal, stopping en route to record the sounds of nature.

Nope, not quite. He fetches up in Ireland rather quickly, where he seems to do all his recordings, and ends up spending more time chatting to the locals than recording birdsong. I guess he's rediscovering the nature of rural life. But this is, in fact, a very silent film. One of those where the levels are weird - I guess the tv don't want to broadcast above a certain volume, but I think certain sounds were meant to be extremely loud - for contrast - and this meant that I had to turn up the volume a couple of times just to hear what people were saying.

That aside, this is a lovely film to watch. Plenty of silent - or near-silent - scenes, birdsong, quiet conversations with just one other person. Especially during these times of pandemic, when so many have returned to their native places, and forsaken the cities - this film makes rural life very attractive, as he wanders about. (He even stops at Mullaghmore, which isn't that far from where I am now!) The people are softly spoken, no contentious topics are discussed, and you get an otherwordly sense of the place that is completely removed from the big city. Lovely and calming. Recommended if you're feeling stressed.

Tomorrow - back to Amazon Prime, I guess. And what's coming up next on my list is The Family Man, which seems to be an Indian series about a government agent who has to keep the true details of his job from his family.

And next Saturday, Up in the Cheap Seats is watching a performance of The Sleeping Beauty, streamed from the Opera House, and available for rental for £3 in the UK, tax added outside the UK. So I've booked that, and will be delighted to join them. Available till the 28th.