Silent Sonata
Silent Sonata director Janez Burger was born in a war torn country. And what he chooses to remember is not the sound of violence ringing across his memories, but his childhood and the games. Through this experience and the experience of so many, even today, losing their childhood to conflict, Burger has created a song without verses.
With no dialogue, as the title may suggest, Silent Sonata tells the story of a farm in an unknown Balkan country. The father and children are coming to terms with the death of the mother, who was shot in the battle, and they struggle to mourn her safely. When a few trucks pull up, he is prepared to defend his family with rifle in hand. However, the invaders are merely a travelling circus, hoping to find a place to rest with their elderly ringmaster. The family welcome them to set up and as the performers practise their art, the family learn to come to terms with a world ripped apart by anguish and war.
What Burger does, by stripping away the dialogue, is present an incredible story powered by haunting imagery. Memory like, the movie seeps its tone through the exquisite and superb dreamscape on the screen. Unforgettable moments lodge in your mind with a fantastical weird and unique flare. Juxtaposing the circus alongside the explosions and death make us hold on to our own childlike thoughts. The profound and sometimes disturbing nature of the film as this pure joyful heart to it that makes the movie just breathe with distinction. Several scenes (actually, almost all) will play on your mind; the children on beach making presentable corpses and the ringmaster’s goodbye are moments of pure delight against a backdrop of trouble and rife. The circus represents beauty in a time of fierce war and Burger does it astonishingly well.
It isn’t entirely perfect, Burger presents these moments so effortlessly and while that is magnificent, some of it requires context. The dead mother coming back to present rings or stalk the family from the window doesn’t entirely work. In most cases, she takes away from the drama of her death and cheapens it with her moody hauntings. Having her die in the first moments is harrowing, continuing their despair without her would level the movie into excellence. Though the dead do come back, including the aforementioned ringleaders finale, hers doesn’t sit well with the rest of the mother and it juts awkwardly against the otherwise stellar settings.
Silent Sonata is about finding innocence in an archaic and brutal world. It is about holding on to the exuberance that is lost when a man grabs a gun against another. It is silent because war is loud and uninviting. It is quiet because it is lost in this scenic spirit. It is peaceful throughout in a troubled. It is silent because it is art and art needs to roar in hearts and not on the tongues of its victims. Silent Sonata, in that retrospect, is ingenious.
Silent Sonata is out on Friday