Reflective Encounters

“A thoughtful musing on the fascination and meditative stillness that can be mined from death as an observer, Marine Blin’s short What Resonates in Silence is notably affecting. With a design approach that patterns itself on the emotional development of its protagonist – a mortician reflecting on the path that led to her occupation and the emotional rewards it brings – there is much that is said not just in its narration but in the stretches of silence that punctuate it. Indeed, a significant contributor to the film’s atmosphere is the intricately constructed sound design that, in the film’s earlier sequences, borders on discomfort as we are subjected to a disconcerting onslaught of indecipherable whispers, hammering home the alienation felt by the narrator’s younger self.

The visualisation of the main character is tellingly at odds with the establishing shot of finely-rendered hands - in her childhood she is drawn in a faux-naïf style, navigating a dismissive world of looming figures who discourage engagement and communication. The film’s turning point, in which she is able to experience the intimate stillness of a deceased ‘giant’ in her life leads into a shift in style, ultimately returning to the detailed renderings of the film’s opening in the conveyance of her adult environment. Ultimately what is communicated to us is the unusual but strangely affirming notion that death and beauty need not be mutually exclusive.”

— Ben Mitchell