The Silence

Suspense fans tired of low-brow, explicit exploitation movies may want to check out "The Silence," an absorbing German thriller that delivers the suspense without sacrificing the drama. At a confident and steady pace, the script allows the characters to develop powerful, yet subtle performances.

On July 8th, 1986, a eleven year old girl Pia (Helene Doppler) is raped and murdered by Peer (Ulrich Thomsen) while a second man, Timo (Wotan Wilke Möhring), watches with equal parts of disgust and arousal. The two dispose of the body and return home, but while Peer began to destroy any potential evidence, Timo has already packed and boarded a bus out of town. 23 years later, to the very day, another young girl goes missing with only her bike and bag left behind at the very spot where Pia was abducted years ago. Writer/director Baran bo Odar's film, "The Silence," follows the distraught families, the police, and the two men behind the original unsolved case in a story that explores grief and guilt, obsession and duty.

It's a well-acted, emotion-charged drama whose murder mystery is almost secondary to the human element. It's a complex examination of the many facets of humanity in which even those who commit the most heinous acts aren't complete monsters. The film is about tragedy and the everlasting impact on those involved, from the victims to the perpetrators.

Director Baran bo Odar maintains a sense of morbid fascination in a film that in someone else's hands might become overwhelmingly unpleasant. Despite its nearly two-hour running time, it never becomes dull or depressing, thanks in part to large cast of characters whose nuanced portrayals strike a chord of truth -- terrifyingly so for any parent. Even though the conclusion isn't exactly overpowering, the journey is remarkably nuanced and compelling – and most certainly an uncomfortable one.

I had two films to review which actually are quite similar.

One is this Das letzte Schweigen, The Silence, and the other one which is from Belgium is called The Treatment.

Both films are excellent thrillers European style, which is slower, more surgical the their Hollywood counterparts if you wish, being The Treatment a little bit more dynamic in terms of pace but not that much really.

These movies are sometimes hard or even painful to watch because they deal with a very disturbing matter which is the children sexual abuse by adults mostly men, pedophiles, sexual predators filling the worst space possible in terms of sexually oriented mental illness, and I say this because despite our feelings for these monsters, (they are people truly sick, they can not help themselves, to the point that many of them want to be castrated or even executed because of the remorse and the guilt) are truly hard, particularly people like me with kids of our own.

This film is made almost documentary like, it brings to mind John Mc Naughton's Henry, portrait of a serial killer with the great performance by MIchael Rooker, being that character a guy in a murderous rampage not only with kids but everyone who get close.

Great acting of the whole cast, with Ulrich Thomsen who is mostly known for the american TV show Banshee, which is full of violence, sex, crime and there Thomsen shines as the former Amish crime boss as one of the two deranged sexual abusers here.

I'm not going to say anything to spoil this movie. Just that it's very well made, disturbing trough and through and from start to finish this is not your typical pop corn thriller but a study of extremely sick people, dark, depressing and showing you that monsters are out there for real and many of them are there to stay.

I'm not getting into technical aspects because in that field the film is correctly made but in my opinion the story and how this is told is the important thing.

Really a serious take no prisoners thriller if you are not afraid of real life nightmares.

In 1986, an 11 year old girl Pia is raped and murdered in a wheat field near a small German town by one man while another watched. Her bicycle was left in the field and the killer was never found. The man who watched takes off after the murder. Twenty three years later, 13 year old Sinikka Weghamm goes missing after the local fair. Her bicycle is found at the site of Pia murder.

This is another dark psychological crime thriller. It is a good representation of the ugliness amidst the normal everyday society. The dark subject matter is normal for these types of movies nowadays. It would be shocking 20 years ago. Today, it's on network TV. The actors do a fine depicting these characters under stress. It remains intriguing until the end.

THE SILENCE is a German murder mystery that's heavily indebted to two separate sources: firstly, the whole look and mood of the currently-popular Scandinavian cop shows (such as THE KILLING), from which the style of music is frequently ripped off (like that whole thing with a single, deep note held for a while). Meanwhile, the plot and police investigation bear more than a hint of the exceptional South Korean drama, MEMORIES OF MURDER.

What follows is predictable but occasionally highly gripping, and strangely enough different sub-plots in the movie have different levels of interest. I admit that I found the whole police investigation to be pretty dull; there isn't actually much investigating taking place, and it all seems very slow and stately. The scenes of grieving parents are so familiar by now that they didn't affect me at all.

A second, alternate part of the film follows the friendship between two men, one of whom is a paedophile and murderer. This part of the film is exceptionally, dealing with dodgy subject matter in an intensely gripping way. Ulrich Thomsen (from THE THING remake) and Wotan Wilke Mohring are both very good here, and I would have much preferred the whole film to concentrate on these two by doing away with the predictable police stuff altogether. However, what we're left with is a real film of two halves; one's powerful stuff indeed, and the other's best forgotten.

'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.