I mentioned last week that there are certain songs that put my heart right in the seat of Doc Brown’s DeLorean and take me right back to that time period from my past. The song paints a picture in my minds eye, and I’m able to step through the frame and dance along in time.

But this week, I had almost the exact opposite experience. I get to that experience at the end of this post. If you are short on time (or patience), just skip to the end and check that out.

What comes to mind when you hear those first few plucks of the guitar from Simon and Garfunkel? If you can’t bring it to the top of your mind right now, just click the video below to give the first few bars a listen.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Does it take you to a specific time/place? Do you immediately recall a particular movie where this song was predominately or subtly featured?

For several years, I would always remember the song as the background music in Roy Munson’s alternative rent payment aftermath from the movie Kingpin.

Roy spends the scene kneeling in prostration to the porcelain god, losing his lunch, over and over again. His landlady offers a few colorful plaudits of his sexual prowess, while finishing the obligatory post-coital cigarette and redressing herself. In an understatement of understatements, she is not an attractive woman.

Somewhat surprisingly, I don’t quite feel comfortable linking to the scene from here… But you have YouTube, right? You can find it if you so desire. I won’t tell anyone.

As Roy retches and gags (along with the audience), the opening lyric is clearly and hauntingly audible:

Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again…

We smile at the play on words, and shudder at the thought of being in such a position ourselves.

It wasn’t until 2008 that I learned that the scene was actually a parody of the 1967 film, The Graduate, with Dustin Hoffman. While I always remembered Hoffman as Hook and/or Rain Man, I had a vague understanding that he was kind of a big deal back in the day before these roles.

When you watch The Graduate, you quickly notice the tone that it sets with its soundtrack. The Sound of Silence plays in the opening credits, during a fantasy montage in the middle, and in the iconic and ironic final scene on the bus.

I won’t spoil the film for you, but seriously, it’s considered one of the top 100 films of all-time. Number 17, to be exact, according to the 2007 revision. Get on that, will ya?

But let’s get back to that song.

If we, as a society, had to decide on the most appropriate song for the contemplation of choices and consequences, The Sound of Silence would surely be in that conversation.

Exhibit A would be the raw, emotionally-rich, and moving performance by Paul Simon during the 10th Anniversary of the September 11th attacks in NYC. For me, personally, it captured my feelings of pain, regret, sadness, and sympathy in a way that no other act of remembrance did that day. My post from that day remains (as of this date) the highest visited article on my website. I would guess that it has more to do with that song than my prose.

Exhibit B comes from yet another film. In Zak Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen in 2009, the song plays through The Comedian’s funeral. The camera pans across the faces of almost every important character in the film. No dialogue is spoken, and none is needed. The song does the heavy emotional lifting, so the actors don’t have carry it all by themselves.

As Art Garfunkel put it in the introduction to what might be the definitive version of the song (in my opinion):

There are times when I’m singing one of Paul’s songs, that I feel that the song is uh, very personal and probably shouldn’t be sung by anyone other than the writer. But, there are other songs that… go beyond one person.

Do you agree?

Click here to view the embedded video.

But instead of just letting this song be soaked with melancholy, contemplation, and regret, with little hope for redemption, let me leave you with the reason I felt compelled to write this article in the first place:

This 8 1/2 minute short film features a rework of the song by einsauszwei. Like the Watchmen sequence, there is no dialogue, at least not audibly. It will make sense right away. Seriously, give up 8 1/2 more minutes of your life and check this out. I will even put forth a money-back guarantee that you will be glad that you did.

Without further ado:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s a beautiful film, in so many senses of the word. And it’s helping to redefine my experience of The Sound of Silence.

If the silence is indeed deafening, perhaps that is still a good thing.

Adieu.