Silence speaks volumes in Oscar films
22.05.12
A hush has fallen over the Oscar race.
Not that there hasn't been the usual cacophony of media chatter over the ups and downs of each nominee's chances before the winners are announced Feb. 26.
But vocal dexterity has taken a back seat to quiet eloquence among many of the contenders, including performances from Max von Sydow's mute Dresden-bombing survivor in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close to Rooney Mara's seething-on-the-inside rebel hacker in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo . It says a lot when the most expressive emoting in Steven Spielberg's War Horse is delivered not by the talking humans in the World War I tale but by the silent steeds as they strike noble poses upon the battlefield.
"To paraphrase an old saying, a look can be worth a thousand words," says film historian and critic Leonard Maltin. "An actor's expressive face or the timing of a scene that leads up to dialogue can have far greater impact than the dialogue itself. Just as sometimes the absence of music can be as powerful as music itself."
Source: Metromix Atlanta