The Silence

On a hot summer night thirteen year old Sinikka disappears. Her bicycle is found at the edge of a field. The place is exactly where another girl was killed twenty three years earlier. That case was never solved. A policeman about to retire remembers the file and wants it reopened. At the same time two men are watching the news: the two who were together at the scene twenty three years ago. One has built an ordinary life since and has a family. The other never went away; he had always been waiting nearby. Baran bo Odar writes and directs. Ulrich Thomsen, Wotan Wilke Möhring and Katrin Sass are in the cast. The source is Jan Costin Wagner's novel. What the film is interested in is not the investigation; the narrative shows who the killer is early and ties its tension to who will break and when. It runs three strands together: the missing girl's family, the police and the two men. The sections given to the family are the hardest part. The photography is wide and bright; the events take place in midsummer, outdoors and in daylight. That choice is the reverse of the genre's habit. In Germany the film brought the director international attention and led to his later work. The real matter it builds is the carrying of guilt; both men carried the same knowledge for twenty three years and each rotted differently. The ending offers no justice and some questions are left unanswered. Who it is for: viewers who like European crime films and slowly built tension. Who it is not for: the subject is very heavy, crime against children is treated directly, and the narrative gives no relief.