The Silence (2010)

Rarely does a director with an eye for cinematic artistry come along, yet Baran bo Odar appears to come by his talent almost preternaturally. Bo Odar does not rely on a certain type of shot for his exquisite The Silence [Das letzte Schweigen], but instead uses a myriad of cinematic techniques to enthrall his viewer with the beauty of his film, and pacify their (given the subject matter) growing concern.

Two men sit alone in a darkened room. As a projector’s reel runs out, the audience catches a glimpse of a wide-eyed and terrified young girl projected on a blank wall. A red car pulls out of a garage, and begins a journey of indeterminate length through the forested areas of Germany. Invoking the introduction of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, The Silence uses an aerial camera to follow the two men as they drive through the countryside set to an equally haunting score. Coming upon a girl on a bicycle, the two men follow her down a dirt road that opens into a wheat field. The girl, eleven-year-old Pia, is raped and murdered. Twenty-three years later, police find a replica crime scene in the same field where Pia was killed, and begin an investigation to find Sinikka (Anna Lena Klenke) and her serial abductor/murderer. The abduction brings together a mixed cast of characters with varying degrees of involvement in the murder. As the police search desperate for the killer they failed to apprehend twenty-three years prior, Sinikka’s parents are forced to suffer in the unknowable torment of uncertainty.

For their limited experience, Baran bo Odar and his DP Nikolaus Summerer shoot one hell of a film. Stitching together their film with expansive landscape shots of forest or wheat fields, bo Odar and Summerer effortlessly link their story while providing a palate cleanser for the more challenging and detestable aspects of the film. For a film with the central focus surrounding the murders of two girls under fifteen, The Silence is curiously enthralling. Some of the more difficult scenes may be hard to watch, but bo Odar shrouds the horror in character development and pensive quietude.

Baran bo Odar infuses a duality into his transitions, using them as a means to control the tension in his captivating picture. Lingering for a few extra seconds on a character’s face, or a particularly uncomfortable moment, bo Odar is able to unsettle his audience before providing a meager relief of a beautiful shot of a meandering German farm or lush forest. The Silence, much like its title, thrives in the silence between characters. A Hitchcockian use of “pure cinema” bo Odar relies on his audience’s sense of naturalistic social cadence to depict just how far short of “normal” his characters fall. While there is never any question of who has committed the atrocities, bo Odar absorbs his audience in the police/ parent’s search for the killer. As we are all privy to the “who-done-it,” bo Odar must work twice as hard to elevate our apprehension to the level of the main characters.

The ensemble cast of The Silence works in a sort of harmony to help the picture achieve its lofty goals. Pedophiles Ulrich Thomsen and Wotan Wilke Möhring portray a quiet desperation one would associate with such a severe mental dysfunction, in a way that makes them both appalling and alluring. Karoline Eichhorn and Roeland Weisnekker are an equally downtrodden pair as Sinikka’s forlorn parents. Equal parts frustrated and completely exasperated; the pair perfectly inhabit their characters unfathomable despair. Working in pairs, bo Odar (and writer of the novel, Jan Costin Wagner) couple Sebastian Blomberg and Burghart Klaußner as “vigilante” police investigators. Klaußner’s Krischan Mittich is a recently-retired police chief (who worked on Pia’s murder investigation) whose obsession with the case has made an indelible impact on his life. Equally as damaged, Jahn’s wife has recently passed, leaving him lost and alone. Clinging to the case with his entire being, Jahn invites Mittich into his life as the men work tirelessly to bring the murderer to justice.

The Silence is a seductively remarkable thriller in the vein of David Fincher’s Zodiac or Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. With an impeccably graceful style and engrossing technique, The Silence is a wonderfully constructed film that shows enormous promise for both director and director of photography.