Aesthetics of Silence and the Ethics of Voice: The Soundscape of Asghar Farhadi’s Cinema

This paper is a contribution to the discussion of silence in art, firstly through elaborating on the nature of silence and then through its utilization in sound cinema, focusing on the movies of Iranian auteur, Asghar Farhadi. Summarizing broader views on the (im)possibility of silence and its ethical and political boundaries, this article specifies the issue by examining three movies from Farhadi: About Elly (2009), A Separation (2011), and The Past (2013), all of which are based on a story of searching for the truth. Through the partial talks and strategic silences from the characters and director, the ethical and aesthetical implications of these silences in disentangling the truth will be discusse