“The mute character occupies an undefined position in space, so that he might emerge from offscreen at any moment. It is as if not being tied down to a voice gives him a sort of angelic -or diabolical- ubiquity. One might find him anywhere without knowing how he got there, as if his mutism or mustness extends even to footsteps and other sounds he makes when he moves.[...] Wherever he turns up, he generates doubt; we rarely know for sure whether he cannot speak or will not speak, and what's more, we don’t know how much or how little he knows. His presence also seems to cause any character he interacts with to question their own knowledge, for knowledge is always partial, and the mute might well be the one who knows ‘the rest’ [...] He is presumed to harbour ‘the final world’, the key to the quest, but which he cannot or wishes not to utter. We might think of him as the place where the story’s crucial knowledge is logged and which can never be wholly transmitted.”  -Michel Chion ‍‍
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