Here’s a refuge from the sound and fury of summer’s blockbusters. It’s a sort-of documentary about Eoghan (Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhride), a sound recordist who heads back to the empty coasts, forests and moors of the west coast of Ireland after years away. Ostensibly, he’s on the hunt for sounds, but we become aware that his return and his harvesting of noise are closely linked to his memories.
Partly, ‘Silence’ is a film about the power of putting your ear to the wind, and some of its most compelling stretches involve Eoghan wandering about desolate landscapes trying to capture sounds on his equipment. If the quiet, thoughtful joke of the film is that there’s no such thing as silence, the film’s more meaningful suggestion is that we bring ourselves to the things we hear as much as we do to the people and things we see. Enigmatic and rewarding.