The Silence

Hearing music with a camera. The best Mohsen Makhmalbaf film yet for me. He is a director who can create magic with sound for a film. We glimpsed this in "Gabbeh", made 2 years earlier. Forget the narrative, it is the magical skill of combining music with innocently beautiful visuals here. A young blind tuner of musical instruments turns composer. The film is a tribute to Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony."

The attempt to bring in animal sounds into the music was accomplished well. The mural behind the kids at the bus stop is clearly indicative of the fact that the film was shot in Tajikistan and not in Iran