170 Hz

Firstly let me say that I'm very glad I didn't see this in the cinema because I found the subtitles being removed a little too soon for me on many occasions. I was glad that I could rewind and even pause the film so I could read what was said.

Most of the dialogue is in sign language. (French Sign Language according to IMDb) When I was very young I had assumed that sign language was international and I wondered why it was not taught to everyone. That would make life much easier for deaf people and solve the language problem for the whole planet! Now that I'm older, I think it was a nice idea.

Anyway, to get back to the film, I also disliked the background sound. Sort of like noises heard underwater. I realize this was intentional, to create an atmosphere of isolation, as was the setting in an old submarine. Nevertheless, the main effect it had on me was to want to turn down the volume.

I was impressed with the young actress, Gaite Jansen, who spent a lot of time walking around a submarine with hardly any clothes on, but seemed not to be bothered by the cold.

Having watched the film, the thing that sticks in my memory is the title. Why 170 Hz?

This movie is, as so many Dutch movies, beautiful shot, but it seems to me a moral movie I didn't want to see. It's a movie about how two deaf people do possible see (and 'hear') the world around them. It has not a story which appeals to me. Two deaf people who are in love, which love is criticized by their parents and whose deafness is ridiculed by bystanders who don't understand their behavior which is defined by their handicap, is too one-dimensional. To me it seems that many Dutch movies, like this one, are made by enthusiastic cinematographers who do disgust normal citizen. It seems to me, that angry young Cinema lovers when came to the big city and started on the film school the made after graduating this school their painfully financed flawed masterpieces special to bash their own often small-town youth,. So, characters are often, like the cinematographers want to be, young, misunderstood, silly, lonely, unconventional, often intelligent, recalcitrant and fighting against society (parents, friends, bosses, teachers... everyone who does have more authority). This Dutch society is still a calvinistic, goody-goody, straightforward but sometimes cruel, brutal, and very stupid society. Although the vision of the lonely heart who fights the world can be an interesting starting point in making a movie, it results in many Dutch movies, as in this movie in an unwanted two-edged, simplified view on the Dutch society. This view is probably the result of the idea of moviemakers that to gain a cinema audience movie stories must have strong contrasts and must be simplified, otherwise the general public wouldn't understand the movie. Together with the other Dutch movie-characteristic; the seemingly impossible ability to write good dialogues, and the Dutch need to show (long)sex scenes results in many movies that failed. Although in this movie about the impossible love of two deaf people dialogue is of course not so important, it makes this movie more an art-video then an entertaining spellbinding picture which many Dutch reviewers do want to see in this movie.