People as an intruder in Neighboring Sounds

Abstract

In Neighboring Sounds, the people appear to have a second role in the narrative, orbiting around middle class characters. Yet, the film engenders a dialectical perspective that conveys an interplay between the ways the people are constructed both onscreen and offscreen thus operating the interconnection between the visibility and invisibility of the people that intensifies the ways they are simultaneously included and elided from the image. Hence, this paper aims to problematize the portrayal of the people in the film, focusing on the politics of its mise-en-scène and how the in/visibility of the people can be read in the light of Nancy’s philosophical construction of the “intruder”. By looking at the people as an “intruder”, we claim that the film tackles on a certain configuration of society that can no longer be seen from the point of view of a clear-cut division of classes. Instead, even when seemingly excluded, the people resist and inhabit the very heart of our society.