Silence - film review

You wait and wait for a film to address the plight of the humble sound recordist and suddenly two come along in the space of a year. Still, we’re a long way from Berberian Sound Studio here. Pat Collins’s melancholic semi-documentary follows scruffy hipster Eoghan as he combs Ireland’s glorious west coast in impossible pursuit of pure silence — repeatedly foiled by humanity’s collective preference for industry, community and natter. It’s a film in which the mere arrival of birdsong on the soundtrack is as a narrative event but there are rewards for the patient; even those easily bored should leave the cinema feeling soothed.