The Silence (2010)

There were moments when I felt a connection between this film and SE7EN (1995), but that didn't prevail. When it was over, I realized only one other film had so adeptly hit the same marks - M (1931). There is a brilliance in character insight here, rarely paralleled in cinema. You're aware of the innermost turmoils of every character, and it is scripted in such a way that there are moments when you're being hit with intense turmoil from upwards of 4-5 characters at once. Each in a different brief scene, each privately (so only the audience and that character know what they're feeling) and each adding to the complexity of what the others are going through by juxtaposition. Smart, smart, smart. Saw this on NetFlix. I doubt I would've found it otherwise. I will be ordering it. Who says digital content is hurting the movies? I just voted with my money, but not for Hollywood.

The film is nominally a police 'thriller' or procedural, focussing on a 'missing' 13 year old child - a crime that is a replica of a similar crime from 23 years previously. Cue a detective who failed to solve the original murder obsessing, the mother having to replay the previous crime, the modern parents falling apart, and a detective who cannot get over his wife's premature death. So much, so far paralleling 'The Killing' and other Scando-noir. But then you see the 23 year old crime played out and who are the perpetrators - cue up to date reactions to this new possible murder. And this is where the crime story becomes an allegory for attitudes to past demeanours - eg Nazi war crimes. The bureaucrat who just wants to shut down the case and not deal with messy complications; the older detective whose life is ruined; and the two perps (one who killed, and one who watched but did not tell) and how they face the renewed focus on the earlier crime. there are lots of references to child pornography which stands as the symbol of unspeakable actions to other helpless human beings! All very laudable, if too dense and slow in playing out. The acting is good, but the script and the over emotional reactions to life it portrays now seem too familiar and uninteresting. A pity as there is something to say here - the real Nazis got away with it, while the subordinates, eg prison guards etc have been tracked down and punished.

'The Silence' is a dour, multi-perspective thriller, telling the story of a murder investigation and its links to another killing twenty years before. The film effectively conveys a strong sense of a contemporary German environment, making the mundane seem very particular, but somehow the whole thing doesn't quite gel: there are too many points of view to make the viewer care about any one, and the mystery depends on an unlikely motive, with a deliberately inscrutable ending. For me the real problem came in the scene where two policemen fight over the hunch that one of them has: it's just not convincing that either of them would care so much. It's a rare case, in my opinion, of a movie that might have benefited from just a little Hollywood showmanship.

Oh dear. Germany has produced quite a few films like this. They contain long, long silences, which are meant to be artistic and profound. In fact, the result is often boredom, and perhaps even worse than that, a lack of proper development of the situation, the characters and the plot. It's as if any German (or Swiss, in this case) director worth his or her salt must disdain anything that might smack of conventional, clichéd storytelling. Unfortunately, they just swap them for other clichés and become lethargic in the process. Apparently this film has been compared to the Killing (the Danish TV serial) and I can see some similarities - except that the Danes know how to combine the elegaic with interesting characters and a story that moves.It's a shame, because there are good actors in here, especially Möhring and Blomberg. The latter might overact a bit, but he is nevertheless compelling to watch. I can't recommend it.