The Silence (1998)

Better Late Then Never

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

i watched it reading a review that described it a extraordinary film . the film is nicely made but i was disappointed after watching it that what it was all about actually .plight of poor people .or the genius boy .very ordinary story line . it is just a situational story does not convey any message . the boy never mentioned his needs to his employer . like the name depicts one gets it after the completion of the movie . not worth watching . i have never watched any tajik movie before . if this is their style it need to be changed .

I saw this film when it was released, more than a decade ago, and I haven't seen it since. So I don't recall all the details. Directed by the famous Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the movie is set in the little known republic of Tajikistan. A former Soviet republic in Central Asia, Tajikistan became independent in 1991 and suffered greatly from poverty and civil war in the first years of independence (in one moving scene in the film, an elderly Russian resident of Tajikistan laments, to the point of almost crying, his economic troubles). The Tajiks are ethnically very close to the Iranians; some say that the Tajik language is just a dialect of Farsi. As shown in the film, Tajikistan seems almost frozen in time, while the movie is set in the late 1990s, a lot of the buildings and cars seem to belong to perhaps the 1950s or 1960s, the floor of most of the houses seems to be made of earth, and the factory where part of the action takes place has an abacus and an old telephone line, but not a computer (I hope that in the time since this film was made, Tajikistan has modernized a bit). The busy bazaars and narrow alleys add to the feeling of a strange place to a western viewer.The protagonist is a blind 10 year old boy, who relates to the world through sounds (the first chords of Beethoven's fifth symphony are a motif throughout the film). Coming from a very poor family, he works in a dilapidated factory tuning the instruments made there (I suppose being blind makes him more able to concentrate on the sounds). A beautiful little girl, who wears tresses and dresses in traditional multicolored Tajik clothes, seems to be his only friend. There is not much else in the movie in terms of action, I suppose that to appreciate this film you just have to sit back and enjoy what you are seeing. The amazingly beautiful color photography certainly helps. It is a poetic movie, but in a good way, unlike in other art movies, this film never feels forced or pretentious.

"The Silence" is not an ordinary movie even though it looks simple. It is the story of a blind boy Hursit who is trying to make both his and mother's living by tuning instruments in local traditional instrument shop.His father has apparently left his family to Russia and Hursit and the mother is having a hard time because they can't pay the rent and they are faced with the dancer of being thrown to the street. The movie uses Beethoven's 5th Symphony in the final scene. The scenery of bazaars,the local imagery of an Eastern town,the local instrument builders and vendors add so much to the atmosphere to the movie. And a little note for those who have just recognized the Iranian movie..Before the Islamic revolution in Iran, the director of the movie was a political activist and because of that he was jailed for more than 4 years, and was let out of jail only after the revolution. After the revolution he abandoned politics, because he had believed that the chief problem in Iran was the cultural one. The movie was also banned in Iran.If you like simple real stories about real life I suggest you see the movie.

This is simply the most beautiful movie I've ever seen. It revitalized all my senses. It helps to have some information about the cultural background of the movie. The fact that it takes place in Tajikistan an X-soviet republic, of Iranian ethnicity and Persian language etc.