DVD Das letzte Schweigen

Most murders are committed by people who know their victim, a fact that is standard fare in most whodunits. Rarely are murders committed at random, although the recent horrific thriller Funny Games (1997, remade 2007) presents the worst possible scenario.

But random murders do occur in real life: all over the world, people disappear and forever remain 'dead' with family and friends who are forever in limbo, unable to achieve closure. Only sometimes are the perpetrators caught.

With that thematic background, The Silence presents just that scenario with the rape and murder of a young female teen that remains on the books of the local police for 23 years – until it happens again to another teen, on the same day of the year, at the same place, and with the same modus operandi.

Unlike other serial killer movies – for example, The Silence of the Lambs (1991) – we know the identity of the killer from the get-go. Moreover, we also immediately know there are two perpetrators, although one of them is obviously reluctant to participate, even passively as he watches. As the two criminals, Ulrich Thomsen (as Peer Sommer) and Woltan Mohring (as Timo Friedrich) give strong and believable performances that center upon their individual but similar proclivities for depravity: brave actors both to take on such abhorrent roles.

But why a gap of 23 years? Well, that's where the story really starts, after we see the first murder in the first five minutes. And when the second murder occurs, so also occurs the retirement party for the local police detective (Krischan Mittich played by Burghart Klaussner) who failed to solve the first; so also the return to duty of an eccentric, grieving, widowed officer (David Jahn played by Sebastian Blomberg) who is obviously still distraught by the loss of his wife (to cancer) and who engages in bizarre activity; and so also the emotional awakening of the mother of the first murdered teen (Elena Lange played by Katrin Sass), who has been locked in unrelenting grief for over twenty years.

And in that mix there is repressed and introverted Timo – now a successful architect, beautiful home, lovely wife, two munchkins, the works – who, when he reads about the second murder, knows immediately who it is and decides something must be done… But, what?

As the police investigate, and as the clues are revealed, the net – so to speak – tightens without the two miscreants knowing. But, as viewers, we know it all, and gradually we move to the edge of our seat as we see how the wrong decisions are made, how the wrong inferences are drawn, how actions by one can be misconstrued by another all too easily, and ultimately how facts can be ignored or discarded for political expediency or professional jealousy and for the need to close a case, once and for all.

Arguably, suspenseful story doesn't get much better than this; although some viewers might argue about narrative holes and coincidence. However, because it's so believable it's so much better, especially the ending which I'm sure many – maybe most – viewers will not see coming, including me. Only in the last thirty seconds, perhaps… when the full irony hits you between the eyes.

The setting is semi-rural, ordinary and faultless; the production is well paced, even at two hours; the dramatic acting – there is absolutely no comic relief – is flawless; and the direction is so good, well, a glance or look truly is more effective than a thousand words. The background music is appropriate but, at times, borders on clichéd, I think. However, this is a movie I'll watch again – not only for the story but also for the narrative structure that combines so many different threads of lives shattered by indifference, inaction, inadequacy or inconsolable sadness.

Highly recommended.

November 2011.

German screenwriter and director Baran Bo Odar's feature film debut which he wrote and co-produced, is an adaptation of a novel from 2007 by German writer Jan Costin Wagner. It premiered at the 63rd Locarno International Film Festival in 2010, was shot on location in Erfurt, Nürnberg and Erlangen in Germany and is a German production which was produced by producers Jörg Schulze, Maren Lüthje, Florian Schneider and Frank Evers. It tells the story about a rural town in Germany where an eleven-year-old girl was brutally murdered on her way home on her bicycle on a summer day in July 1986. The case was never solved and the residents went on with their lives, but twenty-three years later a young girl by the name of Sinikka Weghamm leaves her parents to meet some of her friends and does not return home. The following day, a police officer named David Jahn who recently returned to his job after having been away due to the loss of his wife, is informed that a local farmer has seen a gym bag and a rock covered in blood on the cornfield where the crime in 1986 took place. Shortly after David, his pregnant partner Jana Gläser and his superior officer Matthias Grimmer have gotten started with the investigation of the case, the whole town learns about the disappearance of Sinikka Weghamm. The disturbing news affects all the residents in the small community and especially the mother of the first victim Elena Lange, Timo Friedrich, a married architect with two children and Krischan Mittich, a former police officer who thinks the two cases are related.

Distinctly and precisely directed by Swiss-born filmmaker Baran Bo Odar, this finely paced and incisive fictional tale draws an invariably intriguing and unsettling portrayal of a complicated investigation of a gruesome crime and an intimate friendship between a caretaker and a former maths student. While notable for its naturalistic and colorful milieu depictions, the ardent cinematography by cinematographer Nikolaus Summerer, production design by German production designer Christian M. Goldbeck and production designer Yesim Zolan and the efficient use of sound, this character-driven and narrative-driven psychological thriller interrelates multiple stories, depicts several studies of character and examines themes such as interpersonal relations, interpersonal communication, friendship and grief.

Set in a German town close to the countryside during the early 21st century, this foreboding and melodramatic story about the correlation between good and evil and beauty and violence, contains a fine score by composers Paz De Deaux, Kris Steininger and Michael Kamm and is impelled and reinforced by its fragmented narrative structure and the engaging and involving acting performances by Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen, German actor Burghart Klaussner, German actress Katrin Sass, German actor Wotan Wilke Möhring and German actor Sebastian Blomberg. A poignantly atmospheric and suspenseful independent film which gained the Frankfurt Book Fair Award for Best International Literary Film Adaptation in 2010.