Another Silence (Santiago Amigorena, 2011): France/Argentina/Canada/Brazil

Reviewed by Charles Starr Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Aptly named, Another Silence seems to have silence in abundance.  It succeeds greatly though, through minimal dialogue, vast open landscapes, and little overt expression of emotion from the characters, to convey a great deal.

Another Silence tells the story of a policewoman’s reaction to the murder of her husband and young son.  Choosing the path of vengeance, she travels from her wintery home in Toronto to Argentina in search of her families’ murderers.  Traveling with only a backpack and a stolen gun and giving no obstacle a second thought, be it the distance she must travel, the people she encounters or the means she must employ to track down the killers, this film portrays not only a woman seeking what she believes to be justice but also what her life becomes after such a horrible loss.

The striking and pervasive quality of this film is its lack of outward expression or narrative to convey the great deal of heartache, anger, maliciousness, and loneliness.  It instead subtly presents these things through the main character’s near silent actions, and her sheer determination, which seems to be all that she has left inside of her.  She is uninterested and unmoved by the foreign land in which she finds herself.  She is immune to the kindness of strangers.  She seems to have forgotten about happiness, fun, love, and all things that keep a person uplifted.  She has closed herself off to all of life except for those things that will lead her to the murder(ers) she seeks.  One cannot help but to see this, to see this shell of  a person, who has given up on her friends, her career, her home, her own interests, and know without words or tear stained cheeks that she is in more pain than she knows how to handle.  The viewers are given the credit that they can see this woman’s choices, her blank face, and know that she has chosen to pursue these men so drastically and without concern for herself. She will not have to think of the agonizing torment that lays in wait inside of her.  The time she spends alone, the desert expanses that she travels by foot beautifully represent the distance that she has put between herself and the rest of the world.

A film portraying heartache and loss is by no means original.  Another Silence is such a film- but its means of portrayal are vey much its own.  By allowing the viewer to realize the subtext of the film on their own terms, instead of being hit over the head with it, they are much more connected with the film and the characters- it becomes a more unique experience rather than that of watching just another movie.