The Last Silence

The novel "The Silence" by Hessian crime writer Jan Costin Wagner provides the template for one of the best German cinema thrillers and ensemble dramas of recent times. "The Last Silence" by Baran bo Odar is a prime example that German television productions can also offer quite great cinema.

A gruesome crime shakes the inhabitants of an idyllic small town. Eleven-year-old Pia disappears, only her bicycle is found by a cornfield. Only when her body is discovered in a lake does the full extent of the unimaginable crime become clear. But the perpetrator or perpetrators are never found...

23 years later, young Sinikka disappears in exactly the same place as Pia once did. Newly retired police officer Christian Mittich (Burghart Klaußner) immediately realizes that this must be the same culprit and he wants to help his young colleague David Jahn (Sebastian Blomberg). But not only Mittich and Jahn are shaken by the disappearance of another girl. Family man Timo Friedrich (Wotan Wilke Möhring) is also torn from his well-behaved everyday life - after all, he murdered little Pia 23 years ago together with caretaker Peer Sommer (Ulrich Thomsen). Until now, he has been able to successfully suppress the crime. But now the past comes back to haunt him...

"The Last Silence" is a great thriller that slowly but powerfully draws the audience into a harrowing story. Yet the murders of the girls Pia and Sinikka serve only as a framework for a much broader drama that delves deep into the psyches of the perpetrators, the investigators, and the parents of the victims. The fact that the identities of the perpetrators (of the first murder, at least) are known from the start is of little consequence. On the contrary, this intensifies the events all the more, as the film - like the book - is thus able to take apart the psyche of Timo Friedrich in particular, piece by piece, showing how the crime eats away at the family man from the inside out, without in any way coming to his defence.

While this film is also one of a series of productions from Germany that has been made with heavy television involvement, in this case ZDF (Das kleine Fernsehspiel) and arte. And yet Baran bo Odar's work is a real exception in that his psychological drama doesn't look like a small TV production, but like a first-class feature film. The camerawork, the editing, the worn but always gripping staging - all of it just works big time! The same goes for the convincing cast of actors, among whom Ulrich Thomsen in particular stands out.

Thomsen's Peer Sommer is a particularly terrifying perpetrator in that on the surface he seems completely normal, almost sympathetic, and you can't and won't believe the monster that lies within this unassuming janitor. Thomsen's performance is restrained and precisely because of that, incredibly intense. But also the other actors, like Sebastian Blomberg or Burghart Klaußner deserve great praise. No one in this great ensemble tries to play themselves into the foreground. Here, the actors act with each other, creating a sometimes very harrowing overall picture that lingers long after the credits have rolled.

Thanks to the great camerawork, the discreetly kept music and the sensitive, suspenseful and dense staging and the fantastic ensemble in front of the camera, "Das letzte Schweigen" has become a must-see for all lovers of German cinema. A gripping thriller, a rousing drama, simply a good film - these are enough good reasons to buy a cinema ticket for this work. Absolutely recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp