Silentium (2004)

I saw this movie last night at the Jacob Burns Theater in Pleasantville, NY and was told it is only the 2nd time it has been shown in the US. It certainly deserves a wider audience, but perhaps that explains the few entries I found on this site. My main reason for posting this is not so much to review the film as to ask other viewers whether they found film citation other than the ones to North By Northwest and Butch Casidy - both quite charming. I also found the use of the Mozart opera Abduction from the Seraglio to be clever, given the harem / bordello role in the film. So we have high brow and middle brow references in this film along with Austrian takes on Hollywood garage chase scenes - complete with a clever ending to the scene. Despite the buddy film aspects, this one cannot be mistaken for Hollywood, which adds to the suspense.

I really liked Josef Hader (Brenner) before, but after seen that movie, I must say I love him! In Austria, he's also known a a great comedian and he now shows surprisingly outstanding acting skills in this movie.All the other actors make an excellent job as well, in particularly Simon Schwarz as Brenner's friend Berti.The movie deals with a very explosive topic - the catholic church and sexual abuse/prostitution. I really think that they somehow managed to handle it with the due respect to this crime, but never forgetting to outpoint its existence, even in a beautiful city like Salzburg (where we might think, it only exists in other places).If you're digging black humor, you have to see Silentium!

Silentium is a very funny book and made me laugh out loud, (which very few books do). I was curious how it could possibly translate into a film, as so much of the humour in all of Wolf Haas's Simon Brenner novels comes comes from the prose style and the clever, dry, often very politically incorrect, comments of the narrator. And in the end, a lot of that humour was lost in the film. The film still had the amusing situation and black comedy of the book (even if the plot had been slightly rewritten) and some of the narrator's comments were included, but it was funny more in a sort of slapstick way, whereas the book is witty.

I really like Austrian humor. Many Austrian comedians display a certain kind of self irony modern German comedians seem to be incapable of. Georg Hader is one of the best Austrian comedians out there, and his movies are unfortunately hardly famous in Germany, which is a real pity.Hader mixture of black humor, self irony and the wonderful accent provide splendid entertainment. in "Silentium", he targets the catholic church and the high society of the beautiful city of Salzburg.While Salzburg is a beautiful panorama for this movie, the most important thing about this film are the characters, who - far from being heroes - try to solve a murder mystery with nothing else but courage and surprising integrity - considering they hardly manage to keep their own lives straight.A wonderful example of Austrian comedy. Highly recommendable!