The world is just too damn loud – that’s the thesis of this engaging Kickstarter-funded documentary, which travels the world via forests, anechoic chambers and Japanese tea houses, meeting sonic theorists, Zen practitioners and a secular Trappist, a young American who goes silent for a year while walking the US, Forrest Gump-style. Shen counterpoints the abrasive – and, it’s argued, life-endangering – sonic and visual racket of cities and the digital world against the sights and sounds of stillness. Yet the film sabotages its own logic by slapping on an undistinguished new age-y score, and overusing the verbal punditry, when images and silent space should do the work. Still, an elegant piece that will give you plenty to think about, if you ever get a quiet moment.
