Marc Ribot
Silent Movies

THE REVIEW

It's only by placing the faded film in a dusty, silent projector, steeped in memories and sadness, that you can truly listen to Silent Movies. Savoring its ethereal outlines that escape just as you seem to grasp them, among the chaos of Marc Ribot's madness, intent on capturing every nuance of his being one with the science of the six strings on a 35 mm, with his way of deeply exploring the expressive potential and every escape route from reality through the instrument.

And the frames (imagined, taken from other films, burnt, dark) shine one by one, flowing behind the eyes, in a corner of the brain, scraps of films hand-glued. "Variation 1" is a bare room, an arpeggio that begins haltingly, sparse, essential, hiding a secret in blue reverberations. And the sadness of "Delancey Waltz" is a small farewell dance, accompanying the emptiness under a rain-laden sky, behind the broken windows of a house submerged in dust. "Empty" is the emptiness seen before, colored in dark shades, and moving slowly through melancholic and meditative melodies, shattering in the urgency of the accelerated images of "Solaris", in an ups and downs akin to an ballet mecanique acoustic, creating anxieties, recomposed into a chilling melody. And on a dust-laden road opens the "Fat Man Blues", electric on tiptoe, electric but not disjointed, electric and bitter. Ghosts in the form of noise roam the cold streets of a city emptied of all human feeling in "Postcards From N.Y.", regurgitations in feedback, wind blowing through the gaps of abandoned houses until it opens under a neon light, arpeggiated with a touch of unique beauty. And then the freeze-frame of Chaplin sitting with the little tramp, a sense of past melancholies and melodic carefree moments, with a bitter smile painted on his face of something that will not return.

The film burns, the movie is gone, only a heavy silence remains.