Sunday Review: The Silence

Lonely people

By Morris Dean

Fifteen minutes from the end of the 2010 German thriller, Das letzte Schweigen [The Silence], directed by Baran bo Odar, I asked my wife, "Do you think they might end up not solving this case? The retired police chief was right about the new chief—he's a dimwit."
    The film opens graphically with the rape and murder, 23 years ago, of an 11-year-old girl in a field not far from her home. She has been followed by two men in a red car—or, rather, followed by the driver, his passenger inertly going along for the ride, witnessing the crimes, and saying nothing. Who are these guys, what gives?
    In part a police procedural, in another part a study of loss—the parent's loss of that daughter and another mother and father's loss of their own daughter on the 23rd anniversary of the first murder—the movie is in its overall trajectory an investigation into who murdered the girls, and just what does give with those two guys.
    It's a fascinating unraveling, and the police procedural and the psychological study of loss are well-integrated. Loss is pervasive; there's not only that of the parents of the murdered girls but also that of the police detective who failed to solve the first murder (but went on to become police chief) and that of a troubled detective trying to investigate the two murders and their connection while being torn between following the retired chief's lead and following the lead of his new boss, who like too many police the world over mainly wants to close the case and is quick to explain away troublesome complications as "crackpot theories." The conflict between the two leads tightens the drama to a breaking point we found excruciating.
    There's lots to like in this expertly crafted story involving real, suffering people...lonely people.

We found this well-made film on Netflix instant download.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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