The Silence (2006)

Directed by: André van der Hout, Adri Schrover | 90 minutes | drama, thriller | Actors: Vincent Croiset, Rosa Reuten, Susan Visser, Huib Broos, Nelly Frijda, Joop Keesmaat, Rutger Remkes, Eric van der Donk, Frank van den Bos, Nynke Laverman

Atmospheric and dark film that makes optimal use of the Drenthe locations with an intriguing starting point, which ultimately falls short in execution and opts for an unsatisfactory ending.

The main role is for Vincent Croiset, descendant of the well-known actor family, who plays the lazy Victor Dreisen. The film is initially set up as a culture shock for a city dweller who ends up in a closed village community. What are actually very recognizable and in themselves meaningless moments, gets an ominous tinge right from the start through the use of the music and the premise of the “murder song”. Soon, however, the local inhabitants are remarkably quick to take a great interest in this isolated outsider with his hut on the heath, which makes the basis of ‘Het Zwijgen’ somewhat implausible. Even though the villagers are silent about the exact background of the murder song, there is a very direct integration by, for example, the antique dealer, the weathered shepherd and of course Geesje (Rosa Reuten, also not an unknown last name) who will share the bed with Victor. .

Both Croiset and Reuten play well and know how to develop their characters well. They also get the space for this from the scenario. Susan Visser, who plays Victor’s colleague Heleen, has much less to do and therefore seems to walk around a bit lost in the few scenes that are allowed to her.

The murder song gives you goosebumps and, together with an ingenious use of archive images of Drenthe peat colonies, creates a lot of atmosphere. The camerawork is occasionally very similar to that of the “gothic” master director Tim Burton, which is mainly meant as a compliment here, because it deals a striking blow. So the images are fine. The sequence of those images could have been a little more daring, because the plot is worked out so linearly that the mind almost automatically goes to zero. This could have been prevented by playing with chronology, for example.

With a murder mystery you as a viewer have to be able to go along and puzzle along. Due to the faltering build-up of the tension, the attention slackens and certain scenes do not really come through. Various techniques of the makers to keep the mystery alive, for example by giving the viewer an edge over the main character, or by hiding certain hints here and there, are sorely missed. In this way the original story loses its freshness and it becomes a not very inventive summary. The denouement then falls out of the blue and is not a worthy conclusion to what has unfolded.

That’s a shame, because such a daring atmospheric production by Dutch standards actually deserves better. Kudos to the makers and lenders for getting this project off the ground. There are already enough goofs in the Netherlands about supposedly hip relationship comedies such as ‘Rather in love’ or book adaptations such as ‘The fury of the whole world’. All in all, it remains a three-quarter successful film. A missed opportunity to make another kind of Dutch film, but who knows, maybe it will work next time.