This is another film that you might have seen elsewhere: I think it has won a bunch of awards at various festivals.

I've rarely seen a short film this tightly constructed.  The amount of story that is very coherently packed into these five minutes is amazing.  Upon the groundwork of a basic, one-room scenario for three characters is laid a terrific amount of non-diagetic material.  We see into the lives of the characters, and on top of that we see into the characters' perceptions of one another.

What could very easily become a) confusing, b) repetitive or c) obvious is executed with such precision as to be completely captivating.  Every such sequence reveals new layers of the story,  culminating in the final revelation, which, to me, was completely unexpected.  I asked myself, midway through my first viewing, what the hell is that strange precussion on the soundtrack?

Silent Beats sports a spectacular sense of timing and rhythm, and a supernatural sense of what the audience needs when (which, distilled, is really the essential element of directing and of editing, I think) to take them where you want them to go.

Replete with beautiful images, both in the wide-lens, dramatic angle, slow-motion takes, and in the B&W stills, this film is presented like a well-crafted gift tied with a shiny bow.  Jon and Chris really seem to know how this movie stuff works.