The Sound of Insects

Peter Liechti's The Sound of Insects is a strange, unsettling exercise in style and mood—based on Shimada Masahiko's novella Until I Am a Mummy—about a man who slowly starves himself to death in a makeshift tent in an isolated forest. Based on a true story, the script—apart from a brief scene-setting introduction—consists entirely of journal entries supposedly written by the victim as he slowly succumbs over the course of two months. Read in this English-language version by Peter Mettler, the narration is sheer invention—a mixture of the subject's detailed description of his surroundings and physical deterioration, philosophical musings based on his reading, comments about music and literature, and reflections on his increasingly frequent hallucinations (in reality, no diary was left behind, and the motivation behind the dead man's peculiarly painful mode of killing himself remains a mystery). Liechti doesn't dramatize the actual suicide—never even showing the central character—but instead lays the nonstop monologue over forest footage and impressionistic montages of urban crowds, animals, ghostly figures, glimpses of landscapes and sky, and abstract images. While the effect is frequently haunting, the film's straining for existential depth ultimately grows oppressive, and some viewers might find themselves longing—as does the protagonist—for nature (or God) to bring an end to the suffering. Optional. (F. Swietek)