‘The Silence Before Bach’: Silence works well in Bach experiment

I have often wondered why people eagerly embrace the non-narrative in music — whether it’s a Chopin etude or an extended Grateful Dead jam — but resist the same thing in movies.

Movies last longer, of course, and maybe we need the peg of a storyline to hang onto if people are going to sit in front of a screen for two hours. This is probably why experimental filmmakers have had more success in making short films.

“The Silence Before Bach” uses both music and film to ruminate on the subject of Johann Sebastian Bach. It’s a disconnected series of scenes (which somehow feel connected) in which music is talked about or played. No story builds, and no characters are followed — unless the music counts as a character.

In the opening sequence, the camera prowls around a white, empty room. But not entirely empty: a player piano glides into view, as though propelled by the Bach that comes tumbling out of it.

We watch two truckers talk about life as one noodles a bit of Bach on the harmonica. A church organist plays his elaborate contraption. A man counsels his son in the proper way to attack “The Well-Tempered Clavier.”

Occasionally a scene will intersect with historical fact, such as the legend that Mendelssohn discovered the sheet music for Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” being used as fish wrapper at the local butcher shop.

Unless you take this movie the way you’d take listening to a symphony — enjoying it for its own sake, rather than trying to delve for a single meaning — it will likely be a mystifying experience.

Spanish director Pere Portabella is nearly 80 years old, and he’s been working the experimental side of the street for years. He also produced some films in his time, most famously Luis Bunuel’s landmark “Viridiana.”

Just by sticking with one visual idea for an entire Bach piece, Portabella occasionally strikes gold. You might not think that watching the little punch-holes in a player piano roll as a Bach piece plays out would be interesting — but the longer you stare at it, the more fascinating it gets.