Plenitude // Haunting // Death

This is the final 3-minute sequence from Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy (2018), unedited, as it appears in the film. My intervention is placing Ana María Ochoa Gautier’s quote over the sequence to frame the ways Mandy- who becomes a silent presence in the film- embodies Ochoa Gautier’s conceptions of silence: Silence as plenitude, silence as a haunting, and silence that signifies death. I made this video as part of the 2023 Middlebury Workshop on Videographic Criticism.

Full quote:

“On the one hand, silence invokes a type of plenitude most commonly associated with contemplative techniques of quietness as a means to bring about a transformation of the self. On the other, silence is often associated with a ‘sinister resonance’ (David Toop) that invokes a haunting; the dangers and fears of the unknown; the insecurities produced by the ungraspable and by the profound irreversibility of death.”

Ochoa Gautier, Ana María. “Silence.” Keywords in Sound, edited by David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny, Duke University Press, 2015, pp. 183-102.