On silence

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.

~~Thomas Carlyle

Silence is the great bipolar force in film. It enhances the sinister. Yet it weaponises the good. It stirps the film-goer's nerves for scenes of terror and suspense. Yet it reassures him when a hero refuses to speak, steadfast against betrayal or self-betrayal. Silence extends the horizon of possibility in both directions. ... Silence in great films is a far frontier. We peer over the lip of existence, as if over the edge of a waterfall. The makeshift of words is drowned by the roar of the infinite. We are presented with something unearthly, unworldly; something that urges us to enter the work of art, to inhabit it, to be remade by it. Or be rendered, in some cases, powerless by it.

~~Nigel Andrews, "Seen But Not Heard", Financial Times Weekend, July 29, 2006