Broken Silence

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Broken Silence
Country of production Switzerland
original language English
Publishing year 1995
length 106 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Wolfgang Panzer
script Wolfgang Panzer
production Wolfgang Panzer
music Filippo Trecca
camera Wolfgang Panzer
Edwin Horak
cut Claudio Di Mauro
occupation

Broken Silence is a film of Swiss director Wolfgang Panzer from the year 1995 .

action

After the Carthusian Fried Adelphi had spent almost two decades in the seclusion of a Swiss monastery, his prior asked him to find the owner of her monastery in order to extend the long lease, which expired after 100 years. As a volcanologist shrouded in mystery, she lives completely withdrawn somewhere in the mountains of Indonesia. Released from his vow of silence, Fried set off on his journey and already experienced the expected culture shock on the plane. He loses his wallet, which his neighbor, the Afro-American drummer Ashaela from New York, takes away unnoticed. Fear of flying, Fried breaks off the trip at Delhi airport in order to continue by ship, but immediately gets into trouble without money.

Ashaela invites him, pays the hotel and promises to accompany the Carthusian. So begins a joint journey through India from Delhi via Bombay to Calcutta. Fried learns against internal resistance to adapt his clothes to the climate, and Ashaela finally confesses to him the origin of the travel fund. She has an incurable disease and will die. With their help, Fried can do its job, however, before the girl on the beach Palm at will cremated . Before returning home, he travels to New York to bring Ashaela's friend her drumsticks.

Fried then goes to a church to go to confession. He comes across Pastor Mulligan, who, as the future prince of the church, sits in the confessional with a cell phone in order to be available for the bishop and his promotion. This is also where the film begins: the Carthusian confesses bit by bit what happened to him and what he did, the New York church manager listens to him, first unwillingly and impatiently, then more and more sympathetically. The viewer experiences Fried's story in flashbacks. In the end, Mulligan announced that he would return the favor to Fried with his own life confession.

background

In the film, English is spoken in different ways: Swiss English by Fried, New York English by Ashaela, Indian English, sometimes the Indian and Indonesian national languages. The film was shot first on Hi8 video and later on 35mm film . Broken Silence was released in German cinemas with eleven copies and had a good 160,000 viewers and a video edition within a year. It was also shown in 1998 at the Katholikentag in Mainz. The jury of the Bavarian Film Prize specially created a new category to honor Panzer's English-language film.

criticism

“It would have been easy to make fun of the rules of the religious, which to modern Europeans must appear anachronistic and sometimes not very social. Wolfgang Panzer succeeds in the unexpected: Almost from behind, this monk, along with his awkward unbearability, his brave adherence to his commandments and rituals, with his childish piety and his amazed awakening in the world begins to grow dear to the audience. Fried's odyssey turns into an educational journey the likes of which has never been seen in the cinema. Broken Silence is neither a pious nor a religious film - it tells the story of a socialization. The monk needs a lot of time and long distances to get out of his egocentricity. He begins to suspect that he sometimes looks ridiculous in doing so; he accepts it with dignity. "

epd Film , 11/1996, quoted from: Cinematograph 6/1997

Awards

  • 1995: Shanghai International Film Festival - Best Film
  • 1996: Geneva Cinéma Tout Ecran - Wolfgang Panzer
  • 1997: Bavarian Film Award - Wolfgang Panzer

literature

  • Wolfgang Panzer: Broken silence. A film. Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz, Weitra 1997 (Edition Munich), ISBN 3-85252-166-1 .
  • Thomas Breuer, "Broken Silence". Train religious perception and language skills with films. A practical report, in: Manfred L. Pirner / Thomas Breuer (eds.), Media - Education - Religion, Munich 2004, pp. 178–187.

Web links