{"id":2925,"date":"2016-12-05T19:58:22","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T19:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/12\/05\/films-like-paterson-have-plenty-to-say-about-the-importance-of-learning-how-to-listen\/"},"modified":"2016-12-05T19:58:22","modified_gmt":"2016-12-05T19:58:22","slug":"films-like-paterson-have-plenty-to-say-about-the-importance-of-learning-how-to-listen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/12\/05\/films-like-paterson-have-plenty-to-say-about-the-importance-of-learning-how-to-listen\/","title":{"rendered":"Films like Paterson have plenty to say about the importance of learning how to listen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Denney \/ Little White Lies<\/em><\/p>\n

Y<\/span>our friends on social media all agree, 2016 is the Worst. Year. Ever. It can officially \u2018do one\u2019. Jog on. Get in the sea. But if there\u2019s one thing we can say this most abject of laps around the sun\u00a0was good for, it might be this: it helped legitimise\u00a0the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve yet to see Arrival, Denis Villeneuve\u2019s nearly explosion-free sci-fi drama, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a school of thought in linguistics claiming that the language you use determines how\u00a0you look at the world. To give an often cited example, the word \u2018blue\u2019 didn\u2019t exist in the languages of many ancient civilisations. Which begs the question of whether they could, in fact, \u2018see\u2019 blue at all (in \u2018The Iliad\u2019, Homer makes reference to the \u201cwine-dark\u201d sea). The theory is given a new lease of life in Arrival, in which Amy Adams\u2019 linguistics professor, Dr Louise Banks, is recruited by the US government\u00a0to decipher the language of a group of visiting aliens. Honour prevents us from saying more, but the point is this is a film that illustrates, in brilliant fashion, how words can help shape and even transform our perception of the world around us.<\/p>\n

Words matter. That\u2019s a phrase we\u2019ve been hearing a lot lately, as politicians scatter hate-words like so much confetti and online political discourse increasingly resembles a form of trench warfare. There\u2019s a question in all of this: have we all forgotten how to talk to each other? And if so, how do we learn to start communicating again?<\/p>\n

In Villeneuve\u2019s film, the answer lies, above all, in striving for clarity in the language that we use. After weeks of painstaking research gives Banks the grammatical know-how to ask the aliens about the purpose of their visit, the reply comes that they\u2019re here to \u201coffer weapon\u201d. Naturally, this causes the world\u2019s top military types to wet their knickers, but Banks counsels caution \u2013 the translation is imperfect, things might not be quite what they seem. Later, a dispatch sent to another alien landing site reports that the reply they received was \u201cuse weapon\u201d, subtly vindicating the professor\u2019s argument.<\/p>\n

Banks isn\u2019t the only good listener on our screens right now. In Paterson, Jim Jarmusch puts a little poetry in a world of hectoring prose with his portrayal of a week in the life of a bus-driving poet, played with quiet sensitivity by Adam Driver. Jarmusch, who seems to have a direct line to the god of small things, presents in his film\u00a0a figure who really knows how to listen \u2013 not just in the sense of knowing when to stop talking, but in his\u00a0ability\u00a0to weigh a person\u2019s words and, by extension, the world around him.<\/p>\n

Paterson is about poetry as the art of living, about making yourself open to the rhymes and rhythms embedded in the prima materia<\/em> of everyday life. Unusually for a film about an artist, it also depicts a guy who is also a secret pillar of his community, attentive to the\u00a0woes of friends, colleagues and casual acquaintances\u00a0and, a touch wilfully, allergic to modern technology. (\u201cI don\u2019t want a phone,\u201d Paterson protests to a local bartender. \u201cIt would be a leash.\u201d)<\/p>\n

In other recent films, it\u2019s possible to discern a sense of being done with language altogether. In High-Rise, a TV journalist resorts to grunting like an animal when the social order begins to break down. In both\u00a0Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant\u00a0\u2013 films about Mother Nature taking her revenge on mankind \u2013 the viewer is thrust into apocalyptic landscapes both real and symbolic with only a scant supply\u00a0of salty dialogue for provisions.<\/p>\n

But what if the retreat into silence is really a rediscovery of how to communicate? In Embrace of the Serpent, the sole remaining member of an Amazonian tribe complains that the trees and rocks have stopped talking to him \u2013 a silence called up, we must presume, by the destruction of his culture. Yet by leading an unwitting Westerner on a spiritual quest through the rainforest, he is able to reconnect with his calling as a shaman, and acquaint the Westerner with a deeper form of communication. \u201cI wasn\u2019t meant to teach my people,\u201d he concludes. \u201cI was meant to teach you.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to theologian Maggie Ross, one of the (softly) talking heads in Patrick Shen\u2019s 2015 documentary\u00a0In Pursuit of Silence, shamanism can be read as \u201ca kind of history of proto-monasticism, where someone in the tribe has a facility with silence and understanding the unspoken processes of the world.\u201d Taking inspiration from Zen Buddhists, scholars of silence, John Cage and one bearded fellow who\u2019s decided to push a trolley cart across America, Shen\u2019s film contends that it\u2019s precisely this facility we\u2019re in danger of missing out on in the \u201crace towards modernity\u201d. After all, how can you make sense of sound without its binary opposite?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex Denney \/ Little White Lies Your friends on social media all agree, 2016 is the Worst. Year. Ever. It can officially \u2018do one\u2019. Jog on. Get in the sea. But if there\u2019s one thing we can say this most abject of laps around the sun\u00a0was good for, it might be this: it helped legitimise\u00a0the … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFilms like Paterson have plenty to say about the importance of learning how to listen - Thunderbird Entertainment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/12\/05\/films-like-paterson-have-plenty-to-say-about-the-importance-of-learning-how-to-listen\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Films like Paterson have plenty to say about the importance of learning how to listen - Thunderbird Entertainment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Alex Denney \/ Little White Lies Your friends on social media all agree, 2016 is the Worst. 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