Reviews

Silentium is a very funny book and made me laugh out loud, (which very few books do). I was curious how it could possibly translate into a film, as so much of the humour in all of Wolf Haas's Simon Brenner novels comes comes from the prose style and the clever, dry, often very politically incorrect, comments of the narrator. And in the end, a lot of that humour was lost in the film. The film still had the amusing situation and black comedy of the book (even if the plot had been slightly rewritten) and some of the narrator's comments were included, but it was funny more in a sort of slapstick way, whereas the book is witty.

The combination of the superb black and white photography and the 'Eugene Onegin with a twist' plot made this a real knock out for me. The atmosphere created by the mostly very dark shots contrasted with occasional very bright overexposed white was gripping. There was a superb moment where where transparencies - apparently conventional holiday snaps but where the faces of the actors revealed character and situation subtly but instantly - were shown accompanied by Lensky's heart-wrenching aria from the Tschaikowsky opera Eugene Onegin.

For me the mark of a good film is that it should take advantage of the opportunities presented by that medium, which means that often the story is less important than imagery and atmosphere - Last Year in Marienbad is a good example of such a film. Krisana is in the same mould.