A quiet place in New York City
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In ordinary times, one of the hardest things to find in New York City is a moment of quiet. There are so few places in the city that never sleeps where you’re not accosted by shouts, yammers, laughs, arguments, car horns, bus engines, subway announcements, street performers or radios. Every city—from Mexico City to Los Angeles to New Delhi—has its own soundscape. New York’s is unmistakable and inescapable, and it is recognizable the world over because of its starring role in countless movies and TV shows. There’s a reason why the bridge to Sting’s “Englishman in New York” features a chorus of taxi horns and traffic.
The desire to find quiet and respite in the City is typically so great that there’s an entire sub-genre of article about quiet places in New York. I have a few favorites of my own: the upper floors of the Rubin Museum during a weekday, the Red Hook waterfront around dusk, the distant reaches of Jacob Riis Park beach during winter, and the Financial District after sundown. And every once in a while, late at night, the hall of Grand Central Station takes a deep breath. Let’s be real, though, no one comes to New York for the quiet.
Yet as the quarantine drags on, the denizens of the Five Boroughs become more comfortable and ensconced in their apartments. Torrential rainstorms and 60 mph winds today made venturing out even more psychologically challenging. Consequently, a soggy and windblown run through the park became almost sublime. For miles there wasn't another soul, nor a sound but for raindrops, trees swaying and birdsong. It was almost possible to forget that we were in the middle of Brooklyn. And it was both creepy and oddly refreshing. Things that are typically drowned out by the cacophony of the human world got their chance to exercise their lungs and join in a different sort of New York chorus. The Prospect Park Zoo carried its own tune for a moment.
And then someone rode past on a bike with their music blaring, and the moment was shattered. It’s still the Big Apple, after all.
Today’s Film: A Quiet Place (2018)
Today’s recommendation comes from screenwriter Janelle Berry. Berry is a Brooklyn native and horror fanatic. She attends the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, where she's written three feature films and three TV pilots, her favorite being a horror anthology series with a focus on women as the monsters or victims. In undergrad, she was a journalist in DC at Howard University and continued on to work as a writer for several media organizations there. Fun fact: she also wrote for the historically black newspaper the Amsterdam News, located in Harlem, at the age of 15. You can reach Berry by email at janelle.berry@feirstein.film.
One of the best things about A Quiet Place is that it’s something we have yet to see in the science fiction horror genre. Starring, directed, and co-written by John Krasinski (perhaps best-known as beloved character, Jim, on The Office), A Quiet Place is an intense, mostly silent horror thriller that portrays the danger of everyday noise and was one of my favorite movies of 2018. In a post-apocalyptic world overrun by extraterrestrial predators with ultra-sensitive hearing, Lee and Evelyn Abbott—played by real world husband and wife Krasinski and Emily Blunt—struggle to protect their family in this new era of silence. The opening sequence of the film is enough to make your jaw drop and throw some vulgarities at the screen, and yanks you into a riveting plot that makes you root for the family’s survival.
Krasinski does an amazing job capturing the horror of a silent world. In the intense opening sequence, we aren’t sure why the Abbott family is quiet, except for the daughter, Regan, who’s deaf. The Abbotts tiptoe through an empty store, supplying themselves with food, while Evelyn looks through prescription bottles for her eldest son, Marcus who’s sick. Eventually the family leaves, noting it’ll be dark soon. We soon realize why the family keeps quiet when the Abbotts’ youngest, Beau, activates the sound on a toy space shuttle, and the family turns in terror as Lee runs towards him before it’s too late.
As the film progresses, the tension slowly continues to build as the Abbotts struggle to survive the night in silence with a newborn. The precautionary measures set in place—the sand trails, soft board game pieces, and lack of cutlery clinking against tableware—are not enough to protect them from the danger lurking outside; eventually, inevitably, someone’s going to make noise. Although there are times where sound is used to capture beautiful moments (the only time we hear music playing is during a daddy-daughter dance through headphones), the sequences where sound is used to ramp up the danger are even more harrowing and memorable. Every bit of dialogue, whether verbal or non-verbal, is essential and all the more intimate in a world where speaking is limited and only done when necessary. Loud sounds become the enemy and unease reaches an all-time high as you root for the family to just stay still and quiet so they’ll survive.
While it is a Hollywood movie, A Quiet Place has a unique premise for a horror film. Sound is a tool that the horror genre loves to play with by using intense, dramatic music to build tension, sound design to prompt jump scares, and silence for survival of the character. A Quiet Place uses these tools to its advantage, making everyday noise horrifying and a threat to life. It’s a fresh take on the old horror trope of silence as a savior, yet here, the stakes are much higher, and quiet is the only chance of survival. Count your blessings that while we may not be able to go out, at least we can still make noise.
A Quiet Place is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, YouTube, Google Play, and Vudu.
Reading List:
I have loved Weird Al Yankovic—accordions and all—since I was a kid. The Times went deep over the weekend into his enduring charm.
Check out LeVar Burton’s podcast, LeVar Burton Reads. The former Roots and Star Trek: TNG star and Reading Rainbow host selects incredible short stories—from established and undiscovered authors—and reads them. His voices are great, his inflection dramatic and his taste is impeccable.
Benjamin Reeves is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist and media consultant based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Twitter @bpreeves or write to him at breeves.writer@gmail.com. And please subscribe to this newsletter.