Express News Service
Pradeepan Raveendran’s Soundless Dance (Nisabda Nadanam) opens with footage of rallies in France from early 2009, Tamils registering their voice against the state’s genocide in Sri Lanka as the civil war lasting almost three decades reaches a point of no return.
The sounds we hear with these visuals — blasts and explosions — seem to be coming from northern Sri Lanka. Soundless Dance, like its protagonist, exists in multiple personalities, with one leg in each place.
The film immediately cuts to Siva (Patrick Balaraj Yogarajan), already in France but trying to obtain a visa to live legally. His presence in the country might be physical but he is drawing breath for a soul wandering back home when alone, which is often in a foreign country. Pradeepan shows him crossing the streets of Paris alone, walking through the woods lost and sitting by himself in the train. We catch a reflection of Siva on the train’s window, an image of him that is breathing and surviving elsewhere.