Das letzte Schweigen

'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.

Baran bo Odar's film begins almost wordlessly on a sunny day in 1986. Two men driving along in a red car (Ulrich Thomsen, Wotan Wilke Möhring) encounter a young girl riding a bicycle (Helene Doppler). They pursue her into a cornfield where one of the men rapes her, kills her with a blow to the head and dumps her corpse in an adjacent lake.

Fast forward to 2009, and one of the two men (Möhring) has become a successful architect, married with two children, while the other (Thomsen) works full-time as a caretaker. The memory of that traumatic occasion haunts both of them, creating a complicated web of lies, deceit and implication that leads to the murder of another young girl (Anna-Lena Klenke).

The film's title not only refers to the silence practiced by the perpetrators of the original crime in 1986, but also describes other people's state of mind. For twenty-three years the murdered girl's mother (Katrin Sass) has kept silent about her harrowing ordeal; likewise the police inspector (Burghart Klaussner) who was involved in the original investigation but failed to achieve a result. It is only after this lengthy time-lapse that they decide to come out and voice their feelings, as well as trying to reconcile themselves to what happened in the past.

Shot in garishly bright colors (by Nikolaus Summerer) creating a world of apparently endless summer weather that nonetheless appears highly dystopian, THE SILENCE offers an insight into the pedophile mind, which often thinks it is doing nothing wrong, even while taking a perverted pleasure in watching child porn videos. The film also takes a look at the ways in which such people are allowed to flourish in societies that prefer to turn their collective backs on such unpleasant issues in the belief that everyone is fundamentally well-intentioned. bo Odar's film proves precisely the opposite; it is often the outwardly most respectable people that prove the most dangerous.

"Das Letzte Schweigen" a.k.a. "The Silence" is a sleeper thriller that genuinely shocked and dumbfounded me, but mainly AFTER it was finished! It's the type of film that slowly gets under your skin and the true horror of the plot only hits you afterwards, because you are subconsciously analyzing and re-processing the agitating events over and over again. It was quite a harsh confrontation for me, especially because I'm into dark and devastating horror & cult cinema for nearly two decades now and I have seen numerous of allegedly controversial movies. But "The Silence" is largely different to anything I have ever seen before. It's an extremely slow and moody tale full of totally messed up characters (not a single one qualifies as even remotely normal) and horrifying events & themes that are depicted in a nihilistic and almost everyday fashion. The plot gradually unfolds and the viewer absorbs everything that is coming at him/her, but the truly evil nature of the denouement and the injustice of the climax only hit you – and quite hard, I may add - once the end credits are rolling over the screen. The story starts in a remote little German town in the summer of 1986. Two young men, who share the disgusting passion of watching child pornography (it's not explicitly shown but clearly suggested), are driving around in their red Volkswagen when they spot an 11-year-old girl bike-riding on a dirt road. One of them, Peer Sommer, viciously rapes and murders the defenselessly screaming girl while his pal Timo remains motionless and petrified in the car. Shortly after the incident, Timo flees away from Peer in an attempt to forget everything that has happened and start a new life elsewhere. 23 years later, on the exact same day and on the exact same place, the bicycle and a couple of blood stains of 13-year-old Sinikka Weghamm are discovered. The disappearance of the girl is a nightmare for her parents, but also for the mother of the still unsolved previous murder case as well as for the police officers – retired and incompetent new ones – that are charged with the case. Is it the work of a copycat killer or has the original killer returned? The truth is even more nightmarish than anything you can think of. "The Silence" benefices from a continuously foreboding atmosphere and the gradually revealed details of the case make you uncomfortable. At several points during the movie, you'll find yourself cursing and screaming at the screen in an attempt to speed up the slow police investigation. Themes like child murder and pedophilia automatically make any thriller disturbing, but the sober tone and bleak characters in "The Silence" are almost unbearable. Young director Baran Bo Odar maintains the nail-biting ambiance throughout the entire film and all the acting performances, particularly those of Ulrich Thomsen and Wotan Wilke Möhring, are deeply impressive. There are definitely some plot holes to detect regarding the police investigation and the involvement of the media, but somehow it feels like a factual murder case really could be as ineptly led as this one. The total absence of music, humor and certain background explanations only make the film more haunting. This definitely isn't viewing material for everyone, but highly recommended to thriller fanatics in search of a mature and complex story.

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.

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.