grief broadcast in a register no one receives — "Then this too began to seem…" · S1

The father's film hands Hal his own coming condition as an image: a man producing real, steady grief — tears running the whole time — inside a delivery so deadening that the roomful of listeners scan their mail and pick at their faces, receiving none of it. Maximum sincerity encased in a form that reads as pure noise; the weeping is total and the transmission is zero. And Hal's flat last line — that this too began to seem familiar — is the recognition closing over him: he is watching the figurant he is turning into. [sweep · shared-ground film-optics]