It's Not Silence (2018)
★★★ — It's Not Silence (2018)
Pyramiden. An abandoned Soviet coal mining town sitting in the middle of Svalbard, one of the most remote and inhospitable places on the planet. Just the name alone conjures something strange and compelling, and that strangeness is exactly what drew me to It's Not Silence as part of my A-Z World Movie Tour. Svalbard was always going to be a tough one to tick off, and this short documentary was my entry point. I'm glad I found it.
The film centres on what Pyramiden looks like today, which is to say: largely empty, frozen in time, Soviet-era architecture slowly being reclaimed by the Arctic. But it isn't entirely deserted. A small handful of permanent staff, somewhere between six and ten people depending on the season, keep the place ticking over and guide tourist groups through this peculiar, ghost-town corner of the world. And that's where the documentary finds its real interest: not in the ruins themselves, but in the people who choose to live among them.
The format is pretty simple. This is largely a series of interviews rather than a narrated, guided documentary. There's no voiceover steering you from A to B, no grand thesis being argued. You sit with the people who are there, you listen to them talk about their lives in this extraordinary place, and you let it wash over you. For some viewers, that stripped-back approach might feel like a limitation. And honestly, I'd be half agreeing with them. It is a one-note film. It doesn't really develop or push anywhere unexpected. It finds its subject, sets up camp, and stays there.
But here's the thing: the subject is fascinating enough that it gets away with it. What's life actually like when your community is a handful of people rattling around a ghost town built for thousands? When your nearest anything is a long, frozen journey away? When tourists pass through your home like it's a museum exhibit? These are genuinely interesting questions, and the people on screen are interesting enough to make sitting with them worthwhile. There's something quietly affecting about watching humans carve out a sense of normalcy in such an abnormal setting.
It also pairs well, in a strange way, with my experience of watching Letter from Siberia (1957). That film looks at another remote, Soviet-adjacent corner of the world with a curious and open eye, and It's Not Silence carries a similar spirit, even if it's far more modest in its ambitions.
The other thing working heavily in this film's favour is the running time. Twenty-five minutes. That is the perfect length for what this is. A one-note piece of work is only a problem when it outstays its welcome, and this one absolutely does not. It knows what it is, does what it needs to do, and gets out. I respect that kind of discipline. A feature-length version of this would have tested my patience. At twenty-five minutes, it left me wanting to know just a little bit more, which is exactly where a documentary should leave you.
So yes, it's a modest thing. Don't go in expecting revelations or a deeply structured piece of filmmaking. Go in expecting a window into one of the strangest inhabited places on Earth, held open just long enough to make an impression. For what it is, that's more than enough.
Three stars.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2025-09-09
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