The Sound of Insects – Record of a Mummy

This intriguing latest film by Peter Liechti ignores all kinds of feature-film conventions. The story was inspired by the novella Miira ni narumade by the Japanese writer Shimada Masahiko, who was in turn inspired by a incredible true story. A hunter discovered the mummified corpse of a man aged forty in one of the most remote areas of the country. From his detailed diary notes, it became clear that he had committed suicide by starving himself.
In the film we see precise observations of the surrounding nature – insects, branches, trees, woods – and a series of images of a different order. Are they images of memories, of delusions, of an associative nature? The voice-over text is about self-observations involved with the decay of the human body and the approaching inevitable end. In the film, Liechti is probably interested in making the transitory nature of the ego tangible: all kinds of subtle manipulations take place in image and sound that forge the film into a unity, in which the camera seems to represent the subjective gaze. But despite all these words, this is primarily a film to experience in a sensual rather than an intellectual way. And a film that ideally illustrates the definition of Manoel De Oliveira: Images, words, sounds, music: the four mainstays of the temple that is cinema. (EH)

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