THERE is a new hit in town. It is a movie called A Quiet Place, which is one noisy piece. Far from what people say that they feel like not talking while the film is going on, as if they are part of that human experience onscreen, my experience had me shushing young men and women who were doing annotations or openly expressing their fears as scene after scene unfold onscreen, showing us why silence can be overrated for this generation.
Beside me, a man seemed to have accumulated a one-year supply of chips. Until one monster from the realm of hearing sensations got annihilated, he would not finish munching and the sound coming from the wrapper and his mouth was so loud and enervating, I was waiting for the alien creature to pounce upon him and put an end to my misery.
Perhaps, I am being facetious. Still, I’m wondering where the horror of A Quiet Place resides.
The story opens with a family walking through what appears like an isolated place, with no other humans in sight. This family is composed of a father, a mother and three children. A young boy, Beau, walks ahead of them. The older sister has given him a toy gun, which the father has withheld from the boy. The father fears the sound coming from the toy would create a noise decibel that would bring in something, a terror whose form we have yet to have an idea about. We don’t know yet at this point what will happen. The boy being a boy trains his toy up the skies and begins the motion of shooting. Terrified, the father runs to be with the unsuspecting boy. He’s too late. In seconds, a creature darts, grabs and gobbles down the boy.
Our noise has given us away. Our ways with vociferous technologies have become our horror.
It’s the future: humankind is dwindling and its human groups have withdrawn to hide from monsters who can’t see but who can hear the slightest sound…unless there’s a bigger sound to cover up for any noise. Man doesn’t know where they hide; it is when a noise is made that this phantasm appears and silences the source of noise.
To survive, the family has to stay quiet. They communicate through sign language. Whatever difficulty is there to face—and there are many difficulties—they have to talk so quietly, only their hands and eyes do the talking. It’s a painful sight to witness the disappearance of that which separates man from other beasts—the spoken language.
The irony is that it’s through word-of-mouth and the most clamorous of channels found on the Internet, that I got drawn to A Quiet Place. What’s going around is that this must be the most terrifying film ever made.
I was hooked. I was fooled.
The story demands so much suspension of disbelief, it already begs not be believed in. What’s it about children with “disabilities” that they become the fount of revelations? In the case of A Quiet Place, what is it about hearing impaired children that they would discover the mortal failings of monsters who feed on the clang and the clatter?
I’m not diminishing some of the exciting parts in the film. There’s the mother wounded who must stifle the cry of pains. Then there’s the same mother who in the act of giving birth must suppress any kind of strong moan or cry lest the monster equipped with supersonic hearing hears her and delivers her from her delivery.
Emily Blunt, as the mother, doesn’t have the gravitas yet of a Sigourney Weaver, but she is there, almost there as the mother hen who would kill the hawk to save her chicks from being chewed and spit by any big bird. She’s almost unafraid of a monster, any monster. When Weaver’s Ripley blasts the alien into outer, outer space in Aliens, we not only cheered but shouted “Bravo!” In the end, Blunt’s mother cocks her gun and we have no recourse but to applaud and…wait for the sequel.
Other than Blunt, A Quiet Place stars John Krasinski, who also directs. Krasinski is credited, too, for writing the screenplay with Bryant Woods and Scott Beck. The story is by Bryant Woods and Scott Beck, with the film distributed by Paramount Pictures.
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I HAVE written this so many times in the past: YouTube brings me pure joy. Melodies I barely recall from vague memories of my Lola Miling or even my father humming, I can now view. The rediscovery is both haunting and enlightening. My grandmother used to tell us of a song, “Gloomy Sunday,” which ostensibly pushed some people to commit suicide. Indeed, the original of the song now appears over YouTube: it’s called “The Hungarian Suicide Song” and is presented as part of Historic Mysteries series. The song, which was composed by Reszö Seress in 1936, comes with a warning about how it has been “blamed for more suicides than any song in history” and how “you can still exit if you choose not to hear it.” But that isn’t what this article is about.
YouTube seems to be full of fabulous surprises. Having been a fan of Argentine tango, I’m always in search of dancers who can enchant me either by their ability to slow down a tango to quivering stillness, or speed it up with the intensity of unfaithful coupling. This was almost my daily obsession until my surfing revealed to me through waves of posting this thing called “Queer Tango.” As you may have guessed it, the tango is danced by two male dancers. I do not know where the label “queer” came from—whether it’s a label used by those dancing the tango or inflicted by judgmental critics from outside. Be that as it may, the so-called Queer Tango has yielded not only elegant performances but dynamics that to a keen observer can be an exciting in keen sociological analysis. One question is: Who leads the dance? This is an important question because the tango is originally a set of sensual steps meant for a man and a woman, with the man initiating the moves and the transition, and the woman always ending in a near kneeling position, a woman so wrong that she’s asking for forgiveness and waiting for condemnation.
Well, in Queer Tango, the two men alternate in placing the hand on each other’s back or nape: traditionally, the woman places her hand on the man’s shoulder and the man on the small of her back. With two males dancing the tango, this changes continually. At some point, both men would hold each other’s hand, with the other hand on either partner’s arm. If one is to consider Queer Tango as an extension of the sexual dynamics between two men, then the dance satisfies the curiosity of the straight: men with men are forever changing their notion of superior/inferior. It may be construed also that men with men are not particularly conscious of who is superior or who is inferior. That dumb question about who is the woman and who is the man in a man-to-man relationship is, well, dumb.
I had no plans to write about this yet but then there are two of the avid and breathtaking practitioners of the dance: Martin Maldonado and Mauricio Ghella from Argentina. I was so taken by their dancing, I decided to send them a message through Facebook Messenger. I told them that if ever I go to Argentina, it would be because I want to see them perform live. They responded: “thank you so much Tito!!! Abrazo! [hugs].” Well, this sort of made my day.