Ingmar Bergman's Tystnaden (1963)
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"How nice it is that we don't understand each other. . ."
Three travelers--a woman named Esther, her sister Anna and nephew Johan--are returning home when Esther's chronic illness leaves them layed over in a foreign town. Seemingly accustomed to characteristic stopovers, Anna and a bed-ridden Esther fall into practiced routines, icily keeping the other at bay, while young Johan explores their hotel. As the summer night ominously approaches, emotions from tarnished past steadily invade the atmosphere, ultimately unraveling a truth too unbearable to behold.
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Ingmar Bergman is that snooty Swedish meatball always referred to in Woody Allen movies; but a more popular label would be the landmark director whose emotionally-driven films revolutionized world cinema. Able to push the envelope with his extreme close-up style of cinematography and edgy thematic elements, Bergman brought to the big screen what dramatic theatre only did for a small audience and attained a visual capacity rarely captured within traditional filmmaking. ‘Silence’ is widely revered as one of his darkest, most disturbing portrayals of distressing, hard-to-look-at stuff; probing the depths of human misery, affliction, desire, and repulsion.
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