Beyond Silence
Germany/Switzerland 1996
Reviewed by Nick Kimberley
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Germany, the present. Martin and Kai are deaf-mutes who depend on their eight-year-old daughter Lara to interpret for them, through sign language, the world beyond the family. Lara sometimes uses her power to her own ends, but her relationship with her parents, particularly with her father, is close. The three spend Christmas with Martin's parents and his sister Clarissa, a gifted clarinettist whose music entrances Lara. Clarissa gives Lara a clarinet which becomes her obsession. Martin worries Lara devotes too much time to music and is wary of her relationship with Clarissa. Meanwhile, Kai gives birth to another girl. Lara confirms her baby sister can hear by playing clarinet to her. She continues to translate for her parents and persuades her mother she should learn to ride a bicycle, something she's avoided because of her deafness.
Ten years later, Clarissa suggests Lara come to Berlin to develop her musical talent. When Martin discovers their plan, a row ensues and he throws wine over Clarissa. Nevertheless Lara comes to Berlin, where she meets Tom, a teacher at a school for the deaf. A romance develops. When Lara learns her mother has died while cycling, she returns home. Martin suggests that Kai would still be alive had Lara not encouraged the riding. He discovers Lara's relationship with Tom which angers him. Rejecting her father, Lara returns to Berlin and auditions for music college. Martin attends the audition, which puts Lara off until he tells her in sign language that he wants to understand. Rapprochement is at hand.
Review
In a movie with sound, can deafness ever be presented as anything other than a lack? If music is a healing force, where does that leave those for whom there is no music? Caroline Link has made a decent and honourable film, which might fit in the genre of disability-centred 'problem movies'. But it's hard not to feel that here deafness is a device that enriches our understanding not of deaf-mutes Martin and Kai, but of their daughter Lara. She is the fulcrum of the movie, her centrality emphasised by the fact that just as she uses sign language to mediate between her parents and the outside world, so she must also translate for us, the spectators. Why else does she speak while signing if not to let us know what is being communicated? Deafness (not her own) is a problem that she must solve in order to grow, while Martin's failure to accept the limitations imposed by deafness is the problem he must solve.
At only one point during the movie does Link attempt a point-of-view that might be read as representing deafness: the opening sequence has Lara skating on a frozen lake, our view of her sometimes interrupted by the view from beneath the ice, where the sound of her skates reaches us as if across a great distance and through immense muffling barriers. It is a beautiful, almost hallucinatory passage, yet even here we are aware that what's being communicated is frozen experience. Real life goes on out of sight, out of reach.
Carefully made and sensitively acted (particularly by the two actors playing Lara: Sylvie Testud and the remarkable Tatjana Trieb as the child Lara), Beyond Silence is a touching, at times even a tear-jerking film. Indeed, in one interview, Caroline Link has remarked wistfully, not to say enviously, "People like to cry in American movies." Why, then, the implication goes, shouldn't they cry while watching a European movie? An emotional response does not pre-empt understanding. Nor, on the other hand, does it guarantee it, but by and large Beyond Silence earns our snuffles.
And Link is clearly aware of the problem she has set herself. As in so many movies, music here is healing, enriching, Lara's means to escape. Yet when she visits the school where Tom teaches deaf children, she finds him in a music class. He gets the children to lie on the floor while music is playing and Lara joins them. When the children feel the sound through the floor, one by one they get up and begin to dance. Lara, however, remains on the floor. She can't feel the music. "Poor Lara," says Tom.
It's a sweetly ironic moment, and reminds me of what it feels like to attend signed opera performances. These are routine performances in every respect save one: there's a signer at the side of the stage. Yet by some strange alchemy, the signer's gestures intensify the dramatic, perhaps even the musical experience, although I can't read sign language and certainly cannot understand the experience of those for whom the signer is translating. Beyond Silence has no duty to educate us about deafness, nor to make us empathise. It does, however, make us think and feel. 'Problem movie' or not, it deserves credit for that.
Credits
- Producers
- Thomas Wöbke
- Jakob Claussen
- Luggi Waldleitner
- Screenplay
- Caroline Link
- Beth Serlin
- Director of Photography
- Gernot Roll
- Editor
- Patricia Rommel
- Art Director
- Susann Bieling
- Music/Orchestrations
- Niki Reiser
- ©Claussen-Wöbke Filmproduktion GmbH/Roxy Film GmbH & Co. KG ? Luggi Waldleitner
- Production Companies
- Bavaria Film International/Buena Vista International presents a Claussen-Wöbke Filmproduktion and Roxy Film - Luggi Waldleitner production
- Co-produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk/
Süddeutscher Rundfunk/Arte/
Schweizer Fernsehen - DRS - Supported by Bayerischen Landesanstalt für Aufbaufinanzierung, LfA/Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH/
Bundesministerium des Innern, BMI - Executive Producers
- Uli Putz
- Roxy Film:
- Dieter Nobbe
- Associate Producers
- Christina Undritz
- Thomas Martin
- Andreas Schreitmüller
- Martin Schmassmann
- Production Manager
- Claudia Loewe
- Unit Production Managers
- Chris Evert
- Set:
- Verena Herfurth
- Assistant Directors
- Michael Kreindl
- Margarethe Heitmüller
- Sebastian Grobler
- Continuity
- Regina Spreer
- Heidrun Haensch
- Script Supervisor
- Sarah Duve
- Casting
- Risa Kes
- Children:
- Nessie Nesslauer
- Script Advisers
- Christel Gräf
- David Rodgers
- Underwater Sequences
- Future Effects
- MagicMove
- Costumes
- Katharina von Martius
- Wardrobe
- Constanze Knapp
- Key Make-up
- Heidi Moser
- Make-up
- Iris Müller
- Titles
- Claudia Becker
- Opticals
- Lutz Lemke
- Musicians
- Clarinet:
- Claudio Puntin
- Michael Heitzler
- Cello:
- Imke Frank
- Bass:
- Ivo Schmid
- Violin:
- Adam Taubitz
- Oboe/English Horn:
- David Seghezzo
- Guitar:
- Andreas von Wangenheim
- Piano/Programming:
- Niki Reiser
- Strings:
- Chamber Symphony Basel
- Aura String Quartet
- Percussion:
- David Klein
- Music Co-ordinators
- George Naschke
- Sigi Naschke
- Music Recordist/Mixer
- Thomas Strebel
- Soundtrack
- "Roter Salon", "Weihnachten und Aufnahmeprüfung" by Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock; "Elokim Eli Ata" by Ora Bat Chaim, performed by Giora Feidman; "I Will Survive" by Dino Fekaris, Freddie Perren, performed by Gloria Gaynor; "You Were on My Mind" by Sylvia Fricker, performed by Crispian St Peters
- Sound Supervisor
- Andreas Wölki
- Mixer
- Tschangis Chahrokh
- Sound Effects
- Joo Fürst
- Sound Effects Recordist
- Jan Bennert
- Sound Effects Editor
- Brigitta Tauchner
- ADR
- Supervisor:
- Karin Hoppe
- Editor:
- Sylvia Bartsch Mayer
- Sign Language Coaches
- Sabine Gossner
- Gunter Puttrich-Reignard
- Rosemarie Hasenhütl
- Sign Language Interpreters
- Howie Seago:
- Bill Moody
- Emmanuelle Laborit:
- Laure Boussard
- Sign Language Tutor
- Steffi Abel
- Clarinet Tutors
- Natascha Eikmeier
- Annabel Dashwood
- Max Geller
- Cast
- Sylvie Testud
- Lara
- Howie Seago
- Martin
- Emmanuelle Laborit
- Kai
- Sibylle Canonica
- Clarissa
- Matthias Habich
- Gregor
- Hansa Czypionka
- Tom
- Tatjana Trieb
- Lara, as a child
- Alexandra Bolz
- Marie
- Doris Schade
- Lilli
- Horst Sachtleben
- Robert
- Hubert Mulzer
- Herr Gässner
- Birge Schade
- Fraulein Mertens
- Stephan Kampwirth
- bank adviser
- Léa Mekhnéche
- Johanna
- Laurel Severin
- Martin, as a child
- Selestina Stanisavijevic
- Clarissa, as a child
- Julia Lorbeer
- Bettina
- Alexis Segovia
- Uli
- Anna Bickhofer
- Bea
- Stefan Spreer
- Walter
- Susann Bieling
- toyshop saleswoman
- Karin Lehmann
- secretary at music conservatory
- Stefan van Moers
- colleague at music conservatory
- Marta Rodriguez
- lady at concert
- Jutta Schaad
- music conservatory employee
- Ute Cremer
- Franz-Hermann Hanfstingl
- music conservatory teachers
- Father Groll
- priest
- Axel Hauguth
- colleague at printers
- Carmen Härdle
- Stephan Lewetz
- young couples
- Anna Müller
- Caroline Otto
- Benedikt Obermayer
- Patrick Schleuter
- Noemi Gäbelein
- Christian Marschal
- Ruth Obermayer
- orchestra
- Giora Feidman
- special guest
- Joe Basar
- guitarist
- Tony Falanga
- bass
- Annika Pages
- voice of Lara
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Gala Film Distributors
- 10.174 feet
- 113 minutes 3 seconds
- Dolby stereo digital SR
- In Colour
- Subtitles