Movie Review: The Silence
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Zachary Mandell
Mar 23, 2013, 12:50:03 PM3/23/13
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Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
Zachary Mandell
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Article Title: Movie Review: The Silence
Author: Zachary Mandell
Word Count: 807
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=1826838&ca=Entertainment
Format: 64cpl
Contact The Author: http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=1826838
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=1826838
*********************** ARTICLE START ***********************
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Length: 111 minutes
Release Date: Aug. 19, 2010
Directed by: Baran bo Odar
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Stars: 3.5 out of 5
In present-day rural Germany, a young girl named Sinikka (Anna-Lena Klenke) goes missing in an otherwise picturesque wheat field. Her bike is found in the same position and area that another young girl's bike was found twenty-three years earlier. That girl, Pia (Helene Doppler), was raped and murdered by Peer (Ulrich Thomsen) as his friend Timo (Wotan Wilke M�hring) looked on in horror and arousal. Timo splits town before Peer can swear him to silence, not to be seen again until Sinikka is reported missing.
Once news of her disappearance begins to surface, so do the people involved in Pia's case from the 1980s. Timo is now married with two children and has seemingly buried his secret so deeply that not even his wife or friends know what happened in that wheat field. He is sure Peer is behind Sinikka's disappearance but can't go to the police lest he be arrested for being an accomplice to Pia's murder. The cop who couldn't solve Pia's case, Krischan (Burghart Klau�ner), is still haunted by his inability to find Peer. Pia's mother, Elana (Katrin Sass), still jogs by the wheat field every morning, unable to let her grief go.
The officer assigned to the case, David (Sebastian Blomberg), is also grieving, having recently lost his wife to cancer. He can barely handle reality, much less the case, so he enlists Krischan to help him, since there are eerie similarities between the current case and Pia's. The fact that Sinikka's body hasn't been found gives them a faint ray of hope that she could still be alive, unlike Pia. The two cops begin to work relentlessly to make sense of the clues, as Sinikka's anxious family and a tortured Timo are ready to spill secrets that could bust the case wide open.
"The Silence" has a fairly large ensemble cast, since there are characters from two different time periods that have all come together on a collision course in the present. Despite the large amount of characters, there isn't a single weak performance in the bunch. All the actors are stellar across the board, which just adds to the richness of the film. Particularly touching is Sass as Elana, Pia's still-grieving mother, who can't seem to move on despite the fact that her daughter's body was found and laid to rest. Watching the old memories get dredged up by the new case is an emotional punch to the gut that brings back a flood of bad memories for Elana, who deserves to be free of her grief more than anyone in the film.
One of the things that "The Silence" does particularly well is to show the grief of the families of the victims. Too often, movies in the crime genre focus on the investigation and detectives on the case. If there is any family grieving to be shown, it is generally the family of the lead detective, who doesn't get to see him or her very often because of long hours of investigative work on the case. The family of the dead or missing is usually not the focus, which is a shame, since there is so much drama to be mined there. "The Silence" gives ample time to both the family of the missing girl and forlorn mother of the first victim from two decades earlier. These scenes are sometimes moody, sometimes touching, and always heartbreaking in their quiet desperation. They serve to make the audience want the cases to be solved even more, giving them a vested interest in the outcome of the film.
The ending is a bit of a surprise, because so many possibilities are thrown into play due to the clever screenplay. At some point or another in the narrative, almost everyone becomes a suspect, not just the obvious characters like Peer. With so many family secrets trickling out like the sweat on their heat-ridden brows, it is almost impossible for viewers to decide exactly what the ending will be. This helps ratchet up the tension as the film slowly wades through one tense scene after another until it gets to its ultimate conclusion. Odar has pulled off the rare feat of being able to write and direct his own film without losing sight of what works. Too many times a writer/director is so immersed in the story that he or she overlooks some aspects of the film because he or she is too familiar with the narrative. That doesn't happen here, as Odar has crafted a satisfying film with enough emotional resonance to stay with audiences even after the film is over.
About The Author: As a long time fan of Hollywood I was able to carve out the perfect career in the entertainment industry by writing initially for celebrity news sites and am now the owner of http://MovieRoomReviews.com
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=1826838
*********************** ARTICLE END ***********************
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- For more free-reprint articles go to http://www.isnare.com
Message delivered directly to members of the group:
publish-the...@googlegroups.com
*****************************************************************
Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
Zachary Mandell
*****************************
IMPORTANT - Publication/Reprint Terms
- You have permission to publish this article electronically in free-only publications such as a website or an ezine as long as the bylines are included.
- You are not allowed to use this article for commercial purposes. The article should only be reprinted in a publicly accessible website and not in a members-only commercial site.
- You are not allowed to post/reprint this article in any sites/publications that contains or supports hate, violence, porn and warez or any indecent and illegal sites/publications.
- You are not allowed to use this article in UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) or SPAM. This article MUST be distributed in an opt-in email list only.
- If you distribute this article in an ezine or newsletter, we ask that you send a copy of the newsletter or ezine that contains the article to http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=1826838
- If you post this article in a website/forum/blog, ALL links MUST be set to hyperlinks and we ask that you send a copy of the URL where the article is posted to http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=1826838
- We request that you ask permission from the author if you want to publish this article in print.
The role of iSnare.com is only to distribute this article as part of its Article Distribution feature ( http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php ). iSnare.com does NOT own this article, please respect the author's copyright and this publication/reprint terms. If you do not agree to any of these terms, please do not reprint or publish this article.
*****************************
Article Title: Movie Review: The Silence
Author: Zachary Mandell
Word Count: 807
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=1826838&ca=Entertainment
Format: 64cpl
Contact The Author: http://www.isnare.com/eta.php?aid=1826838
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=1826838
*********************** ARTICLE START ***********************
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Length: 111 minutes
Release Date: Aug. 19, 2010
Directed by: Baran bo Odar
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Stars: 3.5 out of 5
In present-day rural Germany, a young girl named Sinikka (Anna-Lena Klenke) goes missing in an otherwise picturesque wheat field. Her bike is found in the same position and area that another young girl's bike was found twenty-three years earlier. That girl, Pia (Helene Doppler), was raped and murdered by Peer (Ulrich Thomsen) as his friend Timo (Wotan Wilke M�hring) looked on in horror and arousal. Timo splits town before Peer can swear him to silence, not to be seen again until Sinikka is reported missing.
Once news of her disappearance begins to surface, so do the people involved in Pia's case from the 1980s. Timo is now married with two children and has seemingly buried his secret so deeply that not even his wife or friends know what happened in that wheat field. He is sure Peer is behind Sinikka's disappearance but can't go to the police lest he be arrested for being an accomplice to Pia's murder. The cop who couldn't solve Pia's case, Krischan (Burghart Klau�ner), is still haunted by his inability to find Peer. Pia's mother, Elana (Katrin Sass), still jogs by the wheat field every morning, unable to let her grief go.
The officer assigned to the case, David (Sebastian Blomberg), is also grieving, having recently lost his wife to cancer. He can barely handle reality, much less the case, so he enlists Krischan to help him, since there are eerie similarities between the current case and Pia's. The fact that Sinikka's body hasn't been found gives them a faint ray of hope that she could still be alive, unlike Pia. The two cops begin to work relentlessly to make sense of the clues, as Sinikka's anxious family and a tortured Timo are ready to spill secrets that could bust the case wide open.
"The Silence" has a fairly large ensemble cast, since there are characters from two different time periods that have all come together on a collision course in the present. Despite the large amount of characters, there isn't a single weak performance in the bunch. All the actors are stellar across the board, which just adds to the richness of the film. Particularly touching is Sass as Elana, Pia's still-grieving mother, who can't seem to move on despite the fact that her daughter's body was found and laid to rest. Watching the old memories get dredged up by the new case is an emotional punch to the gut that brings back a flood of bad memories for Elana, who deserves to be free of her grief more than anyone in the film.
One of the things that "The Silence" does particularly well is to show the grief of the families of the victims. Too often, movies in the crime genre focus on the investigation and detectives on the case. If there is any family grieving to be shown, it is generally the family of the lead detective, who doesn't get to see him or her very often because of long hours of investigative work on the case. The family of the dead or missing is usually not the focus, which is a shame, since there is so much drama to be mined there. "The Silence" gives ample time to both the family of the missing girl and forlorn mother of the first victim from two decades earlier. These scenes are sometimes moody, sometimes touching, and always heartbreaking in their quiet desperation. They serve to make the audience want the cases to be solved even more, giving them a vested interest in the outcome of the film.
The ending is a bit of a surprise, because so many possibilities are thrown into play due to the clever screenplay. At some point or another in the narrative, almost everyone becomes a suspect, not just the obvious characters like Peer. With so many family secrets trickling out like the sweat on their heat-ridden brows, it is almost impossible for viewers to decide exactly what the ending will be. This helps ratchet up the tension as the film slowly wades through one tense scene after another until it gets to its ultimate conclusion. Odar has pulled off the rare feat of being able to write and direct his own film without losing sight of what works. Too many times a writer/director is so immersed in the story that he or she overlooks some aspects of the film because he or she is too familiar with the narrative. That doesn't happen here, as Odar has crafted a satisfying film with enough emotional resonance to stay with audiences even after the film is over.
About The Author: As a long time fan of Hollywood I was able to carve out the perfect career in the entertainment industry by writing initially for celebrity news sites and am now the owner of http://MovieRoomReviews.com
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=1826838
*********************** ARTICLE END ***********************
- To distribute your articles go to http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php
- For more free-reprint articles go to http://www.isnare.com
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