Boven is het stil

This is a Dutch German co production presented in Dutch with an original title of "Boven is het stil". It is about Helmer who is a farmer who lives with his bedridden father. He looks after the farm and the old man with a kind of determined grimace. He seems to shun anything that would make him happy- having created a world for himself where may as well be totally alone.

Then he hires a young helper in the shape of Henk (Martijn Lakemeier – 'the young boy from 'Winter in Wartime'). This seems to bring a change and as well as looking after the farm he starts to think about himself and awakens feelings he is forgetting to suppress.

Now it is hard to say very much about this without spoiling the plot or making it appear to be a bit dull. This is not for action fans or those who like everything spelled out. There are a lot of silences here with little actually happening. This I felt highlighted the lack lustre existence and the loss of opportunity that Helmer is going through. Some would call this 'lyrically paced'; but it does have its moments and it has a brooding quality that made me want to watch it to the end. And I must say I am glad I did, this is one for people who like their films to sometimes be a bit different.

The work of the Dutch director Nanouk Leopold isn't know here at all. Perhaps that's because the films she makes are not only uncommercial but also uncompromising. "It's all so quiet", which she made in 2013, is, for the most part, a depressingly grim study of loneliness and sexual repression as well as of old age and family relations, in this case between a father and son. Helmer is a farmer living with, and caring for, his old and infirm father. There doesn't appear to be much love or affection between them; it's as if Helmer can't wait for his father to die.

Nothing much happens. Much of the time we simply watch Helmer go about his daily routine, at first alone and then with the help of handsome young farmhand Henk. There is very little communication between any of the characters; this is a very austere picture, shot in bleached colours that are almost monochromatic. Once upon a time you might have said Bresson or Dryer could have made this, (Helmer also keeps donkeys), and it isn't called "It's all so quiet" for nothing. This is a film in which the sounds of silence dominate. Not easy viewing then, but remarkable nevertheless.

a son. and his sick old father. and nothing else. one of films for reflect about the importance of small things. about decisions and about life as a broken window. about every day gestures. and about expectation. a film who could be defined as gray, boring, too slow, strange, bizarre. but it is one of necessaries portraits of a reality so easy to ignore or see it as personal. because it is a film about the status of the other. without a message, without desire to convince. only to remind. this is the motif why, after its end, the only clear memory about the film remains the atmosphere.

Nanouk Leopold adapted Gerbrand Bakker's novel 'Boven is het stil' into a screenplay and directed this cinematic masterpiece IT'S ALL SO QUIET – a perfect balance between silence and the spoken word that results in one of the most tender examinations of life, death and love and the interstices few others have revealed.

Leopold's decision to interplay nature as a place where all animals including man find shelter, food, caring and love makes this visual and very quiet film indelible in the memory.

Helmer (Jeroen Willems) is a single farmer in his fifties who lives with and cares for his aged, bedridden father (Henri Garcin) in the Dutch countryside. His working days are marked by the visits of milk collector Johan (Wim Opbrouck), a man of his own age for whom Helmer holds a secret fascination – a mutual need is evident but unspoken. One day Helmer decides to renovate the house, buying himself a new double bed and moving his father upstairs. His life gains even more momentum when adolescent farmhand Henk (Martijn Lakemeier) is hired to assist, understudies Helmer's techniques for farming and adds some needed cleaning and caring for the farm: he also finds Helmer attractive and attempts to be physical one night – the result of which changes Helmer's thoughts and desires. In this battle of wills between two powerful personalities the father, once domineering and now in decline, and the son, preparing to live his own life when his father is gone what is left unsaid takes precedence over dialogue. But when unexpected words do come to Helmer late in the film, their quiet force is indisputable. The scene when his father finally dies with Helmer at his side is inordinately touch in it very quiet manner. Henk has left, Helmer returns to his farming chores, and at his father's burial, Johan returns and we are left to wonder what will change.

Leaves, cornfields, barren trees, a raven, sheep, cows and silence make this thoughtful paean to life immensely satisfying, Very Highly Recommended.

A typical example of the prevailing trend among new low budget independent art house film makers today.

What's the hallmark of such works, compared to the art house movie of yesterday ? What you might call an extreme kind of minimalism that comes perhaps because of the empowering nature of new technology. Striped away are all the once essential components of a good film. It's a purist aesthetic but what does it leave us ?

We're left with work which is very firmly located in what historically we recognise as 'realism', hyper accentuated by an unnatural stripping away of the spoken word as anything but an indicator of underlying feeling. Sets and props are 'realist' and functional but encounters are strictly subservient to the re-ordered sets of directorial priorities. Typically nature features as an element is such films and it is found as such here.

The problem with this currently prevailing approach to making cinema is that is is somewhat repetitive in that it can be seen in many films being released today. It's as though the obsession to create the conditions that capture feeling entropy creative powers in each director in exactly the same way. The film maker becomes trapped by the schema which dictates the whole form of the work, added to which,in a gesture of self intensification, any attempt, if wanted, to veer away from the strategy is simply disallowed by the form itself.

The result is, well to be frank boring. Hasn't anyone told this new generation of film maker artists who are self confessedly preoccupied with the nature of feeling that the problem with feeling is that it doesn't go anywhere, lead to anything and is essentially nihilistic and inward bound. It's also notoriously difficult to convey or control in film, often leading to long empty cinematic voids whose best asset is the slowing down of pace. The idea that there is some kind of key to unlocking the cinematic propensity to convey the strata of human feeling is akin to the search for philosopher's stone. Does someone need to tell this generation to grow up and face reality ?

Talking of reality, the cliché of reality achieved through this technique needs to be scrutinised and questioned. I would propose that the realism shown here is in fact highly distorted by the entropic effect of the filmic technique which is so bent on prioritising feeling over plot or narrative.

In reality, a farm house can be a hive of activity and the stripped down conversation required for such films as these is highly unnatural and stylistic. The emerging untold story is the plight of the enigma of a gay farmer who is somewhat incidentally tossed into the mix yet is actually a radical and little explored subject. But nothing is given away, largely to maintain the conceit of feeling manifested over narrative. This represents a missed opportunity. The story is not being told. The hinted at relationship between the farmer and the milk collector only highlights that sense of something strategically avoided, if not entirely ignored. The addition of a gay responsive young farmhand becomes almost ludicrous, something closer to an isolated gay farmer's wet dream than anything real and yet the proliferating gay theme is integrated without any realistic sense of consideration or interrogation. Every gay male would comprehend that in reality if three gay farm workers were to converge in such a manner it should be something incredible and very unusual or unexpected. Perhaps a lot would even be discussed. The presence of this gay theme exposes the lack of realism at play here because something very natural is missing. I felt that the director used gay people for her own end whilst ignoring a story that most probably needs to be told.

In the end nothing is clear. The problem with these feeling films is that they leave us with no clarity, with nothing but elemental sensation. A bird, a smell, a bleat, a rustle. A hinted at theme in a throw away line. A lot of guess work. Rather than hover in this unsatisfying threshold, the poetically minded should leap fully into the 'other side' and meanwhile allow stories to reveal and tell us what needs to be told.

The fact that this methodology is currently being repeated over and over again by today's film makers adds nothing to the cause. In fact it conveys a troubling view of a generation so traumatised by the staggering quantities of information and knowledge now available because of new technology that they've backed themselves into a corner from which they must emerge and for which only the totally poetic can cater. Such films as these in the end are neither one nor the other. Meanwhile one asks with concern, which film makers have really got a handle on reality ?