Tremayne Miller is in pursuit of silence: Film review

by LifestyleMK's Tremayne Miller

DARTMOUTH FILMS and QUIET MARK

Presents

IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE

In cinemas 21 October

‘In Pursuit of Silence is a meditative film the explores our relationship with silence, sound, and the impact of noise on our lives.’

A film by Patrick Shen

Produced By: Patrick Shen, Andrew Brumme, Brandon Vedder

Inpursuitofsilence.co.uk

Running Time: 81 minutes

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64c_1MtQUlM

DIRECTOR’S FILMOGRAPHY

Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality (2005)

The Philosopher Kings (2009)

La Source (2012)

Hypaethral (2015)

In Pursuit of Silence (2015)

The film begins with 4 minutes 33 seconds of experimental silence paying tribute to the composer, John Cage, and his famous composition, 4’ 33”.

Momentum is gathering for silence to be introduced back into people’s lives, and it should be noted that the film is not silent all the way through, Shen, however, does combine static camera shots of a tree in a field and a petrol station at night, alongside interviews with individuals whose interests lie in the consideration of sound and silence across the globe, a mixture of academics, monks and audiologists.

Silence then breaks with an introduction to Greg Hindy, a Yale graduate, who’s taken a vow of silence and is walking across the United States to get away from noisy distractions, found in electronics and entertainment.

Shen hopes that the film will bring about change, “..slow down and on some level make the world new again ..”

The Noise Attitudes Survey by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in 2012 states that 48 per cent of people in the UK felt their home life was spoilt by noise.

Only a small amount of the world isn’t flown over by planes, and road noise can significantly be louder. According to the World Health Organisation, eight million people across Europe suffer from insomnia as a consequence.

A normal human conversation is set at around 50-60 dBA, and anything higher will require people to raise their voices.

“All of our physical rhythms are being affected by sound..,”says Julian Treasure, a “sound evangelist,” as well as chairman of  The Sound Agency.

He goes on to say that our bodies are affected by noise in four different ways; and the farther we get away from silence, the more we lose our sense of humanity and we begin to resemble a synth not unlike those in Channel 4 Series, Humans.

Physiologically

Sudden noise can cause the body to produce a shot of cortisol, “the fight-or-flight hormone.”

Psychologically

Sound affects our mood. “If you’re surrounded by noise .. it has a .. bad effect on the spirit,” says Treasure, hearing that many scenes of domestic violence tended to involve police at the scene of the crime having to turn down loud device, often those emitting music.

Cognitively

The reason we cannot understand two people talking at the same time is because our auditory input channel is distinctly limited in its bandwidth. The equivalent to 1.6 human conversations.

Behaviourally

The World Health Organisation writes that noise pollution is a “major public environmental health burden, second only to air pollution,” which can greatly affect one’s concentration.

Children in schools under flight paths are said to have a lower reading ability than their peers whose studies are conducted in a quieter environment.

Noise is also apparent in hospitals, where doctors must make critical decisions.

“..delays in decision-making, errors in receiving information, errors in transmitting information, errors in calculations of medication dosages and a whole series of other downstream problems” have been linked to noise pollution.

Noise is the cause behind some hospital admissions, and Professor of Psychiatry at Queen Mary University of London, Dr. Stephen Stansfeld says that recent studies prove that “hypertension, high blood pressure .. cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and even death” can be tracked back to noise pollution.

FACT: Mumbai is thought to be the loudest city in the world, with its most common cause being motor vehicles. Other sources include - generator sets, office machines, aircraft and activities from industry and construction.

It took the rape of a 10-year old girl one year at the Ganeshotsav carnival for people to stand up and fight against the levels of noise, which on this occasion prevented anyone from being able to hear the child’s cries for help.

‘So why is silence good for us?,’ you ask. Well, scientists are finding that time spent in solitude can be beneficial to our health – both our body and mind.

“silence is where we hear something deeper than our chatter..”

A Japanese environmental researcher who features in the film discusses the silence of the forest, a place where a human’s health and well being can be vastly improved.

“There is a deep wonder in silence and quietness and when you start to experience it, it becomes the thing you want to run to find because in it you feel topped up, inspired. You get genius ideas out of nowhere that make the rest of the day go well.”

This could be because sitting in quiet, without noise or stimuli to distract us, helps to activate the brain’s “default mode”.”

The silent movement

A change is already beginning, particularly in the world of consumer goods. The buying director of John Lewis, Johnathan Marsh says that there is now a higher demand for quieter appliances, especially among those who have an open-plan kitchen, sitting room or dining room.

In Pursuit of Silence a vision of the future is painted, where not only buildings but road networks and entire cities are constructed with auditory impact in mind, as Treasure shockingly reveals an architect in the UK can train up to five years, and only devote one day to sound! It’s no wonder, therefore, that [buildings are] entirely ocular, he says.

It should not be forgotten that we once used silence as a means of survival, and to lose sight of it completely would represent a huge loss within true selves.

In Pursuit of Silence ‘pays homage to the ineffable qualities of silence,’ proving the contention that the balance of noise and silence in our lives has fallen dramatically out of sync.

Silence does not really exist in this modern, artificial world we live in, we just pick up on other sounds.

FILM FACTS

*The film was launched with a Kickstarter campaign in 2013, and was then further helped in autumn 2014 with a second successful Kickstarter campaign.

*In Pursuit of Silence is the first major film to be made about noise pollution, shooting in 8 different countries, including The U.S., Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, China, Taiwan and India. This took place over a 2 year period.

* La Source Shen’s third documentary premiered in 2012 at AFI Docs. It was narrated by Oscar nominee, Don Cheadle, and told the story of Josue Lajuenesse. Lajuenesse, a janitor at Princetown University, visits Haiti post the earthquake of 2010 to deliver clean water to his village.

*‘Patrick has received a grant from the Fledging Fund and for the past three years has been selected by the U.S. Department of State and the USC School of Cinematic Arts to participate in the American Film Showcase..’

Writer © Tremayne Miller

Tremayne Miller regularly presents her reviews on LifestyleMK Tuesdays 7 - 8pm.