The Silence

1963 character study

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Travelling sisters make a stop at a hotel in a war-torn town and wait around for God to say something (I guess) while the son/nephew chases around a little person and finds interesting spots to urinate.

Clearly, the two sisters are two sides of the same woman--the body and the mind, more than likely--with this kid some sort of intermediary, navigating through the labyrinth corridors and, oh yes, befriending little people and finding interesting spots to urinate. The pair of women are contradictions. There's a sickly bookish translator who doesn't seem to know the language where they happen to be and her lustful sister who seems appalled in a scene where she sees a couple engaging in coitus. It appears as if their train got lost, and now they're in a world with phallic tanks and doors--lots and lots of doors. And the troupe of little people, the kind of act capable of really getting some folks going sexually, and a goofy-grinned hotel porter played wonderfully by Hakam Jahnberg though his teeth do most of the work.

What this has to do with the "silence of God" is beyond me, but it is called The Silence and therefore has to fit in with the other two. There's likely a connection between the films that I'm not smart enough to piece together. Maybe that crippled guy from Winter Light is the key with all his talk about the physical and emotional pains of Christ.