Caroline Link directed this film in 1996 based on a script written by herself and Beth Serlin. Beyond Silence was nominated for an Academy Award in 1998 but was beat out by a fine film, Kolya, though I personally would have given the edge to Link’s entry. Link later won the award for Best Foreign Film in 2001 for Nowhere in Africa but was unable to be at the award ceremony in person because her daughter had a bout of illness. Though Nowhere in Africa is a very worthy film, I would again give the nod to Beyond Silence as the better of the two. Hopefully, we’ll see lots more in the future from this talented German director.

The Story: Nine-year-old Lara (Tatjana Trieb) is the daughter of Martin (Howie Seago) and Kai (Emmanuelle Laborit), both of whom are deaf. They communicate exclusively in sign language, Lara is fluent in both sign language and the German language of the society in which they live. She thus becomes, at an early age, her parents’ link to the world of sound. She helps them at the bank deal with a loan officer and pointedly reminds the gentleman, when he is about to shake her hand at the end, that “My parents are your customers, not me.” At a teacher-parent conference where she is herself the topic of conversation, she takes a bit of advantage of her role as translator, providing translations of her teacher’s critiques of her poor reading skills that are a good deal more favorable than the teacher’s original remarks. At home, she translates a television show into sign language for her mother’s enjoyment. Lara is precocious and mature beyond her years, gliding easily between her uncommon participation in the adult world of her parents and the world of children. She is adept in both the world of silence and the world of sound. Lara pays a price, however, for her special role as a child. She has little time to practice her reading or writing skills and is lagging behind her classmates in those capabilities. She is taunted, at times, by schoolmates for her poor reading ability and scolded by her teacher. Lara must often leave school early to help her mother or her father with errands that require a translator. Lara is in the strange position of being a child whose parents are even more dependent on her than she is on them. About this time, Lara also acquires a little sister – Marie – and must now even take on the role of ensuring that Marie hears plenty of conversation as an infant.

Soon we become privy to some of the multigenerational antecedents that contribute to the dramatic core of the story. The childhood of Lara’s father is elucidated via flashbacks. Martin has been deaf from birth and grew up in a family with one sister, Clarissa (Sibylle Canonica). Clarissa and Martin’s parents all had normal hearing. Apparently, Martin received more attention and more allowance for misbehavior from his mother (presumably because of his handicap) while the father favored the more able Clarissa and was demonstrably disappointed with his son. Clarissa grew up resenting Martin’s special treatment while Martin resented his sister’s greater gifts and capacity to please their father. One episode, in particular, was formative. Clarissa had a gift for playing the clarinet, performing duets with her father at the piano. At one large family gathering, Clarissa was performing to everyone great delight when Martin broke out in an uncontrollable paroxysm of abnormal laughter (people who have been deaf all their lives don’t know what “normal” laughter sounds like). The father had lost his patience and temper and had banished Martin to his room. Moreover, whenever Clarissa practiced her clarinet thereafter, Martin was sent to his room. It is easy to see, under such circumstances, that Martin would become resentful of his sister (though the actual object of his hatred should have been his father). The whole idea of music became objectionable to Martin, both because he could not share the pleasure that others derive from it and because it occasioned his banishment from the family.

Now as adults, Clarissa and Michael continue to harbor bitter feelings toward one another. Clarissa is also married, to Lara’s uncle Gregory (Matthias Habich), but they have no children and their marriage is on the rocks. They separate, in fact, part way through the film. Clarissa is envious of Martin’s lovely and loving family. Lara admires her beautiful and talented aunt and Clarissa, in turn, sees Lara, to an extent, as the daughter she never had herself. Clarissa gives Lara a clarinet for Christmas one year – the one that she had first learned on herself. For Martin, this clarinet might as well have been a poisoned arrow. Clarissa’s clarinet had already caused him deep pain as a child and the idea of it reemerging in another generation is more than he can bear. He wants no music whatsoever in his household and certainly not a clarinet to separate him once again from his family. Lara, though she loves her parents and enjoys sharing their silent world with them, does not want to be confined to that world. Lara proves to have as much natural talent for the clarinet as her aunt and is soon the prize student of her music teacher. This success also provides a boost in self-esteem for Lara, who had previously been exceptional at school mainly only for her poor reading.

The film now seamlessly fast-forwards ten years. Lara (Sylvie Testud) is now eighteen, a lovely young lady, and a talented clarinetist. Lara is encouraged by her music teacher and Clarissa to seek admission to the prestigious music academy in Berlin – some 300 miles from home. To pass the entrance exam, she will need to practice intensively throughout the summer and Clarissa invites her to stay with her and her husband in Berlin. For Martin, this is another blow – several blows, in fact. He and his wife will have to make do without their best “translator” (though Marie has developed some of the same capacity), it feels to Martin like Clarissa is trying to steal his daughter from him, and his daughter’s interests (that Clarissa triggered and encourages) – music and the clarinet – is something that Martin will never be able to share with her. Nevertheless, with Kai’s mediation, Lara is soon in Berlin.

In Berlin, Lara discovers a new world. She is coming of age and discovering herself. She also discovers that her aunt’s motivation are not entirely altruistic – she sometimes seems more intent on producing a copy of herself than on supporting Lara’s development into her own person. One day, Lara spots a young man and a child signing back and forth to one another and is intrigued. She eavesdrops on their conversation (in sign language) and follows them at a respectful distance. Suddenly, she is caught staring at the man through a store window and offers an explanation – in sign language. The young man, Tom (Hansa Czpionka), teaches at a school for deaf children. He is not himself deaf, but grew up with a deaf father and learned to sign. Lara and Tom are soon falling in love. The remainder of the story develops nicely, but will be left for viewers to discover on their own.

Themes: The principal theme of this film is communication difficulties, but it is a distinctly multi-layered theme in Link’s deft hands. The most obvious manifestation of the theme is in the difference in language of the deaf characters and those who can hear. Signing simultaneously opens up for the deaf and their families the opportunity to be understood and to understand but also delineates the deaf from those who communicate by spoken language. Beyond Silence is a real eye-opener for people like myself who hear sounds by unobtrusively portraying the many challenges that the hearing-impaired must learn to overcome. We learn how a well placed light linked to the telephone’s ringer can be used to signal a phone call and how a device linking the phone to a keyboard and computer can be used by the deaf person to receive and transmit information. We observe Kai riding a bicycle totally unaware that a truck is bearing down on her, unable to hear either its movement or horn. We watch Lara explaining to her father which events in life have associated sounds and which not. She explains that lightning has little sound but that thunder has a frightening one. She describes the sound of flags flapping in the breeze but that a beautiful sunset has no sound. She explains that snow falling has no sound and, in fact, tends to dampen sound, increasing quiet. Her father is delighted by that idea.

Link originally planned to do a more conventional film about the relationship between a father and his daughter but an article she encountered by chance about a woman who had grown up with deaf parents opened her eyes to the potential of hearing impairment as a metaphor for the broader issue of blocked family communications. The lingering resentments between Martin and Clarissa, between Martin and his father, between Clarissa and Gregory, and between Lara and Martin form the main dramatic substance of the film. The hearing impairment of two of the characters is a complicating factor, but problems of communication exist in every family. Link’s ability to keep her film targeted at this universal manifestation of her central theme is what raises the film from mere advocacy for a disadvantaged group to greatness as a work of art.

There’s even a third, subtle level to the communication theme (though Link does not hammer on it): the communication problems in newly reunified Germany after years of forced division. Mention is made in the film of the intolerance in German society for sign language and the unreasonable perpetration of the notion that it would merely discourage the deaf from learning how to speak orally. Martin’s mother, for example, was discouraged from learning to sign and says, at one point in the film, “If I hadn’t listened to that pighead, my hands might be able to fly, too.”

At another level, Beyond Silence might appear to be just another coming-of-age film, with a talented young woman discovered her heart’s desire both vocationally and romantically. There is a superficial similarity in the plot to films like Flashdance and Save the Last Dance for Me – a young woman must prepare for a terrifying audition that will determine her future! Yet, Beyond Silence gives this old story enough unique and special characteristics to render it original. For one thing, it is the father who has to learn to get by on his own without the protection and buffering provided by his daughter more than the daughter having to learn to survive independently. The special symbolism attached to music in the family’s life also deepens the significance of the conflict inherent in the audition in this particular film.

Production Values: The most amazing thing about this film is how skillfully Link has avoided both sappy sentimentality and preachy moralizing about societal indifference to the handicapped. The emotional moments in the film are well-earned and if viewers leave this film with a better understanding of what the deaf confront or, perhaps, even more empathy for them, it is all accomplished incidentally. Link’s main order of business in Beyond Silence is exploring universal problems that develop and fester in families from slights, and rivalries, and poor communication. Deafness, in Link’s agenda, is simply one of several factors complicating communication difficulties.

Furthermore, the characters that Link populates her film with are all complex, fully-drawn individuals. That point is as true of the hearing-impaired characters as those with normal hearing. None of the characters in this film are without fault nor are any easily dismissed as “bad”, except possibly Lara’s paternal grandfather. His flaws as a person and as a parent are so evident that his negative influence can be seen to have extended through his children to impact his grandchildren as well. What Link gives us, here, is a realistic portrait of familial issues and incriminations occurring in multidimensional characters, like those that exist in real life. Then, Link allows us to share the experience of these characters as they try to come to grips with and resolve some of the emotional baggage that weighs down their souls.

The cinematography in this film is really quite beautiful. I am shocked that the reviews from the national press that I read made no comment on it. The scenes between Lara and Tom are especially gorgeous. There is one segment where the two are playing shadow games with their oversized shadows cast against a wall decorated in modern art. There is another scene where the two dance in sign language. There is another magnificent shot where Lara has just returned to her Aunt’s home in the glow of first love where she stands against the door that she has just closed behind her, bathed in perfect light. The opening and final scenes of the film are also exceptionally well shot. The film begins with a shot from under the ice of a skating pond where the muffled sounds together with the ice suggest the communication barrier created by hearing impairment.

The soundtrack for this film was usually important to the film’s content. For one thing, the narrative was partly about the ability of music to tear a family apart and, later, to help bind them back together. The treatment of music in this film, if not a theme per se, is at least a remarkable bit of recurrent symbolism. The entire existence of music is a sore point for Martin. He derives no joy from it, it separated him (literally) from his family as a child, and, now, it haunts him again as the thing to which his beloved eldest daughter is bent on devoting her life. Music becomes Lara’s passion and we share some of that passion through the wonderful clarinet strains scattered through the film. There’s also a lovely dance tune “I Will Survive,” to which Lara and Tom dance and fall in love. Among the many awards received by Beyond Silence were at least two given to Niki Reiser for the music: a gold from the German Film Awards and a Best Music honor from the Bavarian Film Awards.

The performances are superlative across the board in this film. Sybille Canonica, with fiery red hair, simmers and burns as Clarissa in her scenes. Howie Seago, who played Martin, is a deaf American actor who some viewers might recognize from his television role in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I did. He is able to provide performances of full emotional range and nuance without the benefit of speaking. The part of Kai, Martin’s wife, was played by a deaf French actress, Emmanuelle Laborit. One indication of the extent to which Link avoided shallow stereotypes is how differently Laborit and Seago performed their parts. They are far more complementary, as characters, than similar. Matthias Habich and Hansa Czpionka were very good in their smaller roles as Gregory and Tom respectively. The real news, however, is the magnificent performances turned in by the two actresses who together performed the lead role of Lara – Tatjana Trieb as the child and Sylvie Testud as the young woman. Trieb was duly adorable and precocious. Trieb and Testud were exceptionally well-matched allowing the transition mid-film from nine-year-old to eighteen-year-old to proceed without a hitch. They were easily experienced as the same character. Testud is definitely an actress that I want to see again. Although it wasn’t quite love at first sight, she grew on me quickly and by the time she had been on screen for five minutes, I was fully hooked. There’s nothing in her list of credits currently that I personally recognize, but she’ll be in a film that is currently in production called Victoire. I think I’ll make a point of keeping an eye out for it. Testud’s performance in Beyond Silence was remarkable for its subtlety of facial expressions.

Bottom-Line: In addition to the nomination for Best Foreign Film at the American Academy Awards in 1998, Beyond Silence received many international recognitions. Link received a silver medal in the director category from the German Film Awards and Best Director for a Youth Film from the Bavarian Film group. The film took the Grand Prix at the 1997 Tokyo Film Festival and the Best German Film award from the Guild of German Art House Cinemas. It won the Most Popular Film award at the Vancouver International Film Festival. This is no mere sentimental tear-jerker. It has real artistic depth in every respect: multi-layered themes, complex characters, high quality cinematography, and a fine soundtrack. Most of all, it resonates emotionally and has a fully believable story with depth and sweep. Beyond Silence is in German and sign language with English subtitles. Music and sound is also described so that this film ought to be fully understandable for the hearing impaired as well. It has a running time of 100 minutes and is rated PG-13 (there is one modestly rendered sexual scene).


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Germany:

The American Friend
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
The Blue Angel
Das Boot
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Dr. Mabuse the Gambler
Fitzcarraldo
Kings of the Road
M
The Marriage of Maria Braun
Metropolis
The Nasty Girl
Nosferatu
Pandora's Box
Run Lola Run
Stalingrad
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
Threepenny Opera
The Tin Drum
Wings of Desire
Zentropa

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older