The Music of Silence

A film that starts from a singer's life. Amos is born on a farm in Tuscany. He has a condition in his eyes from birth and his childhood passes in doctors' rooms. His voice is noticed early. He sings at family gatherings and everyone goes quiet. At twelve a ball strikes his head during a football match. He loses the sight he had left. He is sent to boarding school. There is music there but discipline as well; the teachers find his enthusiasm for opera unnecessary. He studies law and becomes a lawyer. At the same time he sings at night in piano bars. Then he goes to a teacher. An old tenor takes him on and teaches him one thing: do not force the voice. From there the film is a story of rising. A competition, a studio, a record and a hall. What the narrative is interested in is not blindness but permission: the real obstacle in front of Amos is not his eyes but everyone telling him what he cannot do. The source is the singer's own autobiography. The names are changed and the narrative calls its central figure Amos Bardi. The recordings are the film's contested side. The voice heard in the singing is not the actor's, and that creates a break between the performance and the sound. Toby Sebastian, Antonio Banderas, Jordi Mollà and Luisa Ranieri are in the cast. Michael Radford directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes opera and biographies of musicians. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a critical portrait; the film never presses its subject and passes over the difficulties quickly.