Walking, Talking, Singing, Exploding…and Silence: Chantal Akerman's Soundtracks

Chantal Akerman's sound strategies are defining elements of a unique film language noted for effects that feel close to direct experience and seem to approximate the passing of real time. Drawing from a range of Akerman's films, from Saute ma ville (1968) to No Home Movie (2015), five categories of sound that are of special interest in Akerman's films are considered: walking, talking, singing (music), exploding, and silence. Local examples are analyzed to give a sense of how, within these five categories, Akerman cultivated an overall tactic of desynchronization – often separating layers of sound from one another within the soundtrack, and always working the soundtrack as a whole against the visual image track – to amplify effects of immediacy and temporal complexity, and to generate layers of meaning powerfully but indirectly.