The Sound of Silence

Not a lot of people like silent films (comedies seeming to be the one exception). It's understandable. They can be long, boring, extremely dated, hard to follow, can be disjointed, don't involve, in most cases, waring alien robots, and require, above and beyond all else, our undivided attention. You can't sit doing something else, listening to a silent film and fill in the blanks. You need to read and watch. The other problem is that, in most cases, because no one owns the rights to them, which version do we pick up? Some have missing footage, some have ugly and careless transfers, alternate title cards, and soundtracks that don't touch anywhere near what the original would have sounded like. I think it's safe to bet that, back when Murnau was making Nosferatu he didn't have Type O Negative's Beatles meets Black Sabbath doom metal playing through his head as inspiration.

I'm in the bandwagon. Most of the way at least. I don't outright refuse silent films and have watched many of the titles by the big names: Griffith, Lang, Stroheim, Murnau, Dryer, Eisenstein, Chaplin, Keaton. But these are films mostly reserved for academic study or those film history completests and are, in most cases, easier to admire than outright enjoy.

What inspired all this? Last night I watched D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, his epic, in a way, apology for his previous masterpiece Birth of a Nation, the seminal and hugely racist epic that changed and rewrote film history as we know it. Why did I watch it? Because it is also seminal to film history, it's another notch on my belt, it's something you keep hearing about in film classes, the Babylonian sequences are supposed to be expensive and breathtaking (certainly that tracking shot of the dancers on the steps of Babylonia is one of the best ever committed to film), and all of the above.



Intolerance is, let's admit, long and hard to follow. It's also a visual masterpiece that was, except for Birth of a Nation, like nothing else anyone had ever dare try to attempt before. And as I was watching it, slowly but surely a new realization began to sink in: silent film was the most cinematic film has ever and will ever be. Ah ha. Revelation!

A lot of purists at the time (Munsterberg, Arnheim, etc) thought that sound was the death of film. A lot after that thought colour was the death of film too. Of course it's the standard now and even the huge ambassadors of black and white (Scorsese, Speilberg, Bogdanovich), haven't used it in ages. I think, the major stepping stone that sound and colour contributed, beside the obvious technical breakthrough, is that people felt it was pushing film one step farther away from theatre and one step closer to actual reality.

Reality or realism has always been an issue within film and especially film criticism. Films are criticised because people don't talk or act like that, no one in their right mind would do that and that's just not possible in real life. Fair enough. You've read it plenty in this space as well. But the term is one of those misrepresented critical idioms alongside "interesting" and "flawed." It just doesn't hold sway because it doesn't get used properly.

In that sense, silent films were about as realistic as they needed to be. Realism is not so much about a film's ability to reflect absolute reality (that, you'd have to admit, would be pretty boring), but about creating characters and actions and events that tie believably into the story. There's nothing about Knowing that is believable or realistic, but everything that happens makes sense within the context of the overall narrative. That's realism. That's believability.

The difference between current times and silent times is that, like the theatre, silent films asked their audiences to meet them half way. Just like the physical space of the theatre, which clearly does not take place on the streets, the beach, in front of a sunset, wherever, must be left up to the imagination, much of silent film requires that same leap of faith. We know we are watching a movie, but it's up to us to imbue the imagines with the realism they are trying to depict.

That's important because, at it's essence, silent film is filmmaking broken down into it's purest form: stories told through pictures edited together to create a whole. That's what every silent film was. That's what the medium of film was founded upon.

The pictures themselves, I think, add to the pure cinematic experience. That is, above and beyond all else, the images as captured look like nothing other than filmic images. You will never mistake a silent film as theatre or television or any form of art or reality. The thoughts don't even factor into the equation. When I look at Joseph Gordon Levitt and Seth Rogen (to take the most recent example) in 50/50 I see two actors who I know in a film about getting cancer. When I watch Intolerance, I am transported to an olden time in which the men and women and horses in Babylon look like they could actually be men and women and horses in Babylon. The illusion is seamless. There is no sense of actors on a set in front of a camera. Today Babylon would look like it was created inside a video game that could stretch on forever. In that sense, just maybe, the farther we have moved away from silent film, the farther we have moved from realism after all.

50/50

Although 50/50 is at its best in it’s small, quite scenes, it is still, I think, invaluable that the film is a comedy. Of course the description of a 27 year old diagnosed with cancer doesn’t immediately scream laughter, but why should the film not be funny? In the face of complete uncertainly why be stripped of the one last tool we have to cope; to make the most of what could possible be the last moments of our lives; the one last thing we have control of that makes us unique and human? 50/50 isn’t a comedy by choice but by necessity. When we’re left to swim by ourselves; when the odds are in no one’s favour; and when it’s inevitable that, at some point in this big ugly process, we will most certainly be staring death in the face, by God the least we can be allowed to do is laugh.

And that’s what 50/50 does. It takes the most hopeless of situations and brings something human out of it. Is humour a way of keeping an arms length from the true gravity of the matter? Sure it is, but what else could a young protagonist want when faced with the untimely possibility that there is nothing really left for him to do except wait to see if he dies? It must be nice to know that, in spite of it all, when many want to treat you like a special sob case, there are friends out there who still know you’re not above a good joke.

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), is 27, works in radio, and is having back pain. Maybe he tried a new sex position and hurt himself offers best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen). That can’t be, he and artist girlfriend Rachel (Bryce Dallas Howard) haven’t had sex in three weeks.

Adam goes to the doctor for an MRI that reveals a rare form of cancer at the bottom of the spine. The plan is to shrink the large tumor down to a more manageable size with chemo and then cut it out. Adam’s odds of survival? About 50/50.

There’s no more need to describe the plot. Along the way we are introduced to Adam’s mother (Angelica Huston) who is overbearing, dealing with a husband who has Alzheimer’s and just wants to care for her poor sick baby who doesn't want to be reminded that he is a poor sick baby. There’s also Katherine (Anna Kendrick), who is currently studying for her doctorate and is assigned to council Adam through the process.

The film is thus a way of going through the motions as Adam slowly, painfully, but not unwillingly takes every day as it comes, walking towards a conclusion that has no more reassurance than the question mark that exists at the end of the road.

Kyle does his best and Rogen provides much of the film’s comic relief as he helps Adam shave his head, uses his friend’s disease to pick up girls, gets high with him, and does his best to support Adam in the only way he can: by being his goofy but caring friend. When the news is broken to Kyle he is as hopeful as he knows how to be: if Adam were a casino game, he'd have the best odds in the house.

Along the way Adam also grows close to two other older chemo patients he meets during treatment. One of them is played by the invaluable Phillip Baker Hall, who has one of those Christopher Walken presences. Whenever he is on screen one perks up in expectation of something good going to happen and sure enough Hall walks away with some of the films most insightful and honest moments.

The film was written by Rogen’s friend Will Resier who apparently based the story on his own personal experiences and how Rogen tried to support him. And although it feels like the work of a first time screenwriter (it’s a little to tidy for its own good) it also captures the small, profound moments that only someone who has walked in these shoes could possible have dreamed up.

Director Jonathan Levine and his stars don’t back the film up into moments of big melodrama. Instead they keep it quite and human, finding truth in the small moments between friends and family as they all try to find the best way to cope with an impossible situation. The small treasure of the film is in its showing just that: as these people laugh, cry, look into oblivion and do their best to crack a smile. That’s all they can do. When the odds are 50/50 the ball’s in no one's court and the film thankfully doesn’t try to have it any other way.