I
must say that I am far beyond mere silence as I`m writing
this review; I`m beyond memory. This is what happens when
I never find the time to write the review for the film which
I watched two or three weeks ago. Now the experience of viewing
this film is rather vague. But I think I'll be able to salvage
some of what I saw.
Beyond
Silence is a German film that gives us a very unusual situation.
The central character is a daughter of deaf parents, which
creates a very unusual dynamic. The child has full capacity
of her hearing, which means that she has to be the liaison
between the parents and the outside world, which creates a
number of problems. Her schooling suffers (and her mother
will often bug her from outside the window during class),
and she has to deal with the general mundane aspects of adult
life by having to deal with bankers and other authority figures
as her parent's representative. Actually, I would be so bold
as to say that she is the parent and the parents are the children,
because the parents are the ones who need the attention.
During
one Christmas holiday, the young girl gets together with her
aunt and uncle. The aunt is accomplished on the clarinet,
and for Christmas she gives the young girl a clarinet of her
own. It is this event which will forever shape the future
of the dynamic between the girl and her parents, especially
her father. This is possible for a number of reasons. The
father will never forget the shame and humiliation he felt
as a child, when his sister, the girl's aunt, became the centre
of attention for doing something which a deaf child could
not understand. There is a strange flashback scene where the
father as a child decides to mock the sister, apparently for
looking like such a damned fool blowing on a wooden stick,
and then is punished for his actions. Obviously he has not
forgotten it, and feels some resentment at the daughter for
taking a path which does not include him. Overall, it is not
really the music which is the problem for him, but the fact
that he cannot always depend on his daughter to guide him
through a world that he cannot hear. While it is certainly
noble to help one's parents, the fact is that a person cannot
live like a servant for all hours of every day of one's life,
and her flourishing interest in music reflects her desire
to make something out of her own life. She needs to let go,
and so does the father.
The
daughter lets go in an unusual way, by finding a boyfriend
who teaches deaf kids (there is an interesting display of
social embarrassment when she first meets him conversing with
a deaf child). She and he fall in love, and, for her, this
represents her first real experience with a social life beyond
that of her parents. This affair is a major source of contention
for the father, since he, like many dads of many types have
since the dawn of time, cannot stand to see his daughter as
someone who actually has emotional and physical relations
with a guy! It is difficult for him to accept the fact that
she is growing up, and moving on.
The
idea of the father having to let go of the child is something
which happens to every family, but the twist in this movie
is that he has to let go because it is she who can no longer
protect him rather than the other way around. The daughter
has her own life; she has boyfriends, she has the chance to
have a career, and she does not want to always feel that she
has to put her life on hold for her father all the time. He
is so used to having her as a guide to the hearing world that
her absence creates resentment, and forms a barrier between
them. He has to be able to escape his occasional stubbornness
and selfishness - feelings borne out of an inability to understand
concepts which only make sense to those who can hear. At the
same time, the daughter has to overcome her resentment towards
him, and remind herself that he is family, and that she can't
completely abandon him after having selflessly cared for him
during her younger years. Both of them have to let go of their
anger and resentment.
What
we have here is a fairly entertaining movie, about a very
unusual subject. Of course the film is sappy and sentimental
(even though the film is German, it is owned by Disney), and
everything ends happily ever after, with the proper moral
messages. But foreign films don't usually pile on the goopy
stuff, which means that what occurs is very tolerable, and,
in many cases, very illuminating.
David
Macdonald
David
Macdonald's Movie Reviews
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