It’s like watching a ghost walk through a frame, the words almost haunting your ear because you can’t quite catch them. I remember one time I saw a quiet Italian silent drama where the intertitles were in a regional dialect that even I struggled to read. It felt like the film was speaking in a lost language, a secret code that made the story feel even more intimate—and a little alien. Language is the soundtrack for cinema, and when it fades or disappears, the picture has to fill that void with silence, body language, and that universal longing for something we can almost grasp but never quite do. It’s a reminder that cinema is as much about what’s left unsaid as what’s on the screen.

I usually let the mystery linger—like a filmic cliffhanger that keeps you guessing. But every so often I’ll crack a pencil in the margin, try to guess the cadence, and laugh at my own earnest attempts. It feels like improvising a lost scene, and the result is usually as close to a parody as it is to truth.