Music is an essential part of any film, but when it comes to

Host: The studio was almost empty now, except for the lingering hum of the mixing console and the faint vibration of a forgotten bassline still echoing in the monitors. A single lamp glowed above the soundboard, spilling a warm circle of amber light across a chaos of sheet music, coffee mugs, and scattered cables. The night outside pressed against the glass, silent and watchful.

Jack sat at the piano, his fingers resting lightly on the keys, not playing—just touching them, as if to feel the ghost of sound. Jeeny stood by the window, her silhouette framed by the faint neon shimmer of the city. The air between them was dense with silence, the kind that waits for something sacred to begin.

Jeeny turned, her voice low and filled with memory.
Jeeny: “Music is an essential part of any film, but when it came to Mercury, it actually became a medium of communication.” Santhosh Narayanan said that once. Do you know why it haunts me, Jack? Because it’s not just about sound. It’s about speaking without words—about the way a note can carry a feeling that even truth can’t.

Jack: (dryly, eyes still on the piano) You always make it sound like music is some sort of spirit. But in the end, it’s just frequency, vibration, and timing. A language, sure—but not a sacred one. The film used it because it had no dialogue. It was necessity, not poetry.

Host: The light flickered, a soft pulse against the soundproof walls. Somewhere, a string instrument leaned against a chair, still vibrating faintly, as though remembering the last melody it played.

Jeeny: (approaching him) But that’s exactly the point, Jack. The absence of words made the music speak louder. In Mercury, it wasn’t just a score—it was a language of fear, love, and pain. Every beat was a sentence, every silence a breath.

Jack: (smirking) You talk about it like it’s magic. But sound can only mean what we’ve been conditioned to feel. A minor key means sad, a major key means joyful—it’s all cultural coding. There’s no real communication, just interpretation.

Jeeny: (defiant, her tone sharpening) And yet, when you hear a child hum after their mother’s funeral, you know exactly what that means, don’t you? No one taught them that. That’s not coding, Jack—that’s grief turning into sound.

Host: A thin chill crossed the room. The hum of the equipment** deepened**, as if listening. Jack looked up, his grey eyes meeting hers. The silence between them tightened, charged with something more than disagreement—something like memory.

Jack: You think music connects us. I think it just mirrors us. It reflects what’s already inside—the rage, the beauty, the fear. But it doesn’t bridge it. You can’t stop a war with a melody.

Jeeny: (softly) Tell that to Beethoven, when he wrote the Ode to Joy while he was deaf. Tell that to the prisoners who sang in Auschwitz so they wouldn’t forget their humanity. Music doesn’t just mirror—it defies. It’s the soul’s rebellion against silence.

Host: The word “silence” hung in the air like a suspended note. Jack looked away, his jaw tightening, his fingers pressing a single key—a low C that echoed like a heartbeat beneath the floorboards.

Jack: (quietly) You always find a way to make everything holy. But when I look at film music, I see architecture, not emotion. It’s designed. It guides what the audience should feel—a form of manipulation.

Jeeny: (with fire in her eyes) Manipulation? Or translation? Because what is cinema but a conversation between the seen and the unspoken? In Mercury, where no one could speak, the music wasn’t telling us what to feel—it was listening for what the characters couldn’t say. It became their voice.

Host: She moved closer, her shadow falling across the keys, her reflection trembling in the metal surface of the piano lid. Jack’s hand froze above the notes, suspended mid-thought.

Jack: (softly) You think silence is absence. I think silence is truth. Words lie, music manipulates—but silence… silence is what’s real.

Jeeny: (eyes brightening) And yet, silence without music is just emptiness. It’s like watching a face with no eyes. The music gives shape to the silence, Jack. It teaches it how to speak.

Host: A faint rumble of thunder rolled in the distance. The rain began to tap against the window, slow, uncertain, then steady—like an orchestra warming up before the first note.

Jack: (looking toward the sound) Funny, isn’t it? The weather has its own rhythm, too. No composer, no conductor—just the world playing itself.

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) Exactly. That’s what I mean. The world is always speaking, Jack. The leaves, the wind, the rain—they’re all part of the same score. The music of Mercury wasn’t written to impress—it was written to listen.

Jack: (half-laughs) You’re impossible. You turn sound into spirit, cinema into confession.

Jeeny: (steps closer, her voice trembling now) Maybe because I remember what it felt like to lose it. My mother—she couldn’t speak after the stroke. But when I played the violin, she would hum along. Just one note, sometimes two. That was her voice, Jack. That was her saying she was still there.

Host: The room seemed to shrink, the air tightening with memory. Jack’s eyes softened, the cold rationality flickering behind something more fragile—understanding. He reached out, his hand gently pressing a chord. The sound filled the space, trembling and alive, carrying something between them—something wordless.

Jeeny: (whispering) That’s what Narayanan meant. The music wasn’t there to decorate the film. It was there to speak when the tongue failed. To tell us that feeling itself can be language.

Jack: (after a long silence) Maybe… maybe you’re right. Maybe music doesn’t just mirror—it mediates. Maybe it’s the only bridge left between isolation and understanding.

Jeeny: (smiling softly) And maybe that’s why it hurts sometimes—to listen. Because it asks us to feel what we’ve been trying so hard to translate.

Host: The storm outside had softened now, the rain settling into a gentle hush. The lamp hummed faintly. Jack began to play—a slow, uncertain melody, each note deliberate, fragile. Jeeny closed her eyes, the faintest smile tracing her lips, as if she recognized the unspoken words beneath the sound.

Jack: (quietly, almost to himself) You know, Jeeny… sometimes I think music isn’t about what we want to say. It’s about what we’re too afraid to admit.

Jeeny: (opening her eyes) That’s exactly what Mercury did, Jack. It made silence sing.

Host: The camera would have pulled back now—their figures small beneath the soft light, surrounded by a sea of instruments, shadow, and memory. The piano’s melody lingered, delicate as a whisper, dissolving into the air until only silence remained.

And in that silence, something profound spoke—a conversation without language, where sound became truth, and music, as Narayanan said, became a medium of communication.