The Sounding

Satisfies the hunger for a good, original story told and acted well . . . a compelling mystery, at that, with nary a vampire or serial killer in sight. The premise of an intelligent, vital individual, choosing not to speak, seemingly content to summon, reconfigure and enter Shakespeare's words, poetry and drama at will, to suit her every mood and occasion is intriguing. Loved it.

The Sounding is the kind of film you see every few years that comes out of the indie circuit and rekindles your belief in storytelling and the power of human connections. Beautifully shot, acted, and realized. These are filmmaker we'll hear from in the future. And Catherine Eaton is already a movie star.

The Sounding is a brave film about resistance: resistance to conformity, to conventionality, to the expectations of the dominant culture and its narratives about normality and sanity and the kinds of lives we're allowed to pursue without the cultural enforcers, including the medical establishment and the state, coming down to set us straight via medication and even incarceration. So long as we speak the exoburban language of consumption and self and reaction and generally behave, chances are good we'll be left alone. But, if, one day, we lose faith in conventional discourse and subvert it by beginning to speak . . . Shakespeare, well, all bets are off.

Catherine Eaton is mesmerizing as Liv, a young woman who, on a windswept island off the Maine coast, has chosen to remain silent for years. Eventually, she begins to speak again, but in an English composed entirely of Shakespeare's words. That's when the assault on her freedom begins. She must be protected, mustn't she? Surely, she must be normalized, the cause of her anomalous behavior diagnosed, and a path to "recovery" prescribed and followed. Surely she must give up her resistance to those who would help her. Surely.

Ms. Eaton both directs the film and delivers a masterful, haunting, and powerful performance as Liv. The cinematography is breathtaking — the Maine coast is difficult to get wrong, but its desolate, Novemberish beauty is a poignant setting for Liv's struggle to be free and live an authentic life as she imagines it. Eaton has written that the film is ultimately about "otherness" and its cost. It couldn't come at a more propitious moment than the present that is witnessing a demonization of the foreign Other who presents such a vulnerable scapegoat onto which too many Americans are projecting their anxiety and insecurity. It will be a great benefit for this film to be available for all Americans to see and think about.

This is a fascinating and very well made movie. A women decides not to talk, despite being mentally capable, and after her grandfather dies will only talk in Shakespearean quotations. It's a movie that asks the fundamental question of communication and let's you answer it. With a tremendous supporting performance from Harris Yulin, the grandfather, a well designed and written screenplay by newcomers Catherine Eaton and Bryan Delaney and a, quite simply, intriguing plot, this movie certainly succeeds. While it needs a little polish, as it drags in spots in the beginning and doesn't nail its ending, it is already very good nonetheless.

The beauty of this film is it's ability to viscerally illuminate the struggles and triumphs we all encounter, at one point or another, to communicate. It touches deeply on how fragile and sublime life is. The story arc traces how difficult it can be to be clear about one's intentions, 'words' and actions, and how when we are not so clear, it can cause harm, despite our good intentions. Eaton's grounding in the Dharma becomes evident through her gentle yet strong performance as well as the film's allegiance to the core truth that all being's inherent qualities are kind and compassionate, even though we may be temporarily covered in a dirty cloth.