Klarinet Archive - Posting 000150.txt from 2007/05

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Beyond Silence
Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 14:12:16 -0400

Dan Leeson wrote,
> Can anyone comment on the film, "Beyond Silence"
>which is about a young girl given a clarinet by her
>aunt and she proves so talented that she goes to study
>in Berlin??

"Beyond Silence" opened in Germany in 1996 as "Jensiets der Stille," in
German and sign language, and was released in the USA with English
subtitles in 1998. Caroline Link, the director, co-authored the screenplay
with Beth Serlin. Niki Reiser wrote the original music for the soundtrack.
The movie is a coming-of-age story about an eight-year-old hearing girl,
Lara, living in rural Germany with her deaf-mute parents. When her aunt
gives the child a clarinet, Lara begins taking lessons and learns she has
ability.

Lara's parents use her as their translator with the hearing world, to the
point where their demands interfere with her schooling. Like many
deaf-mute people completely dependent on sign language, they don't
appreciate the importance of reading the local spoken language. The
father, embittered and self-absorbed, lacks empathy with the child's love
of music--the moreso because of unresolved sibling rivalry between him and
his hearing sister, whose motives in introducing Lara to music include
spite against Martin. The movie jumps forward ten years to the girl's
difficult decision: whether or not to leave home to try to gain admission
to a prestigious music school in Berlin, despite her father's opposition.

The movie stars Tatjana Trieb as Lara in childhood and Sylvie Testud as
Lara at eighteen, with Howie Seago as Martin (Lara's father), Emmanuelle
Laborit as Kai (Lara's mother), Selestina Stanissavijevic as Clarissa in
childhood (Lara's aunt and Martin's sister), Sibylle Canonica as adult
Clarissa, Matthias Habich as Gregor (Clarissa's husband) and Hansa
Czypionka as Tom (Lara's boyfriend, a teacher for the deaf). Seago and
Laborit are both deaf: wise casting, because they need to look convincing
in sign language. I'd be curious what deaf people think of the four
hearing actors who also need to look convincing using sign.

Since my German is elementary and I rely heavily on the subtitles, perhaps
I shouldn't try to comment on the acting, but I do want to point out that
most of the *characters* behave theatrically, as deaf people do behave in
real life. The deaf communicate far more vividly with facial expressions
and body language than hearing people do. Similarly, people who work
intensively with the deaf pick up these habits. Thus it's difficult for me
to be sure where "actor at work" shows through a performance--but,
nonetheless, some of the line-readings between actors playing hearing
characters, particularly in the scenes between Testud and Czypionka, sound
a bit mannered ("actressy") to me.

Margaret Thornhill wrote,
>>If this is the film I think it is, the promotional
>>advertising showed the actress holding the
>>clarinet with the right hand on top.

Yes. The photo is printed in reverse. Unfortunately, that error signals a
general problem with the movie for viewers who play the clarinet. Clarissa
and Lara (both as children and as adults) look totally unconvincing as
clarinet players, although the producers hired three clarinet instructors,
Annabel Dashwood, Natascha Eickmeier and Maximilian Geller, to coach the
actors. Claudio Pantin and Michael Heitzler play the clarinet for Lara and
Clarissa on the soundtrack. (The Internet Movie Database gives the
spelling "Hetzler," but, based on past experience with the IMDb, I'd guess
the screen credit spelling, Heitzler, is more likely correct and the IMDb
credit is misspelled.) Klezmer clarinet player Giora Feidman has a cameo
as himself, when Lara attends a concert at the school where she's working
up the nerve to audition for admission.

The soundtrack strikes me as appropriate rather than good. If the little
kids in the atrocious beginner band sounded like a pack of little Mozarts
(looped by professionals), then the movie would set off my crap detectors.
Unlike danyel, I'm not bothered by Clarissa's and Lara's amateurish
music-making. Clarissa's not supposed to be a brilliant jazz and salsa
musician. She's grown up from just another pampered kid playing duets with
her dad into just another local at an open-mic jam. (I'll leave it up to
someone who lives in Germany to dispute in detail danyel's assertion that
African Americans are an improbable sight in a German jazz club.) By the
end of the movie, Lara's an 18-year-old student with a deficient musical
education so far, not some sophisticated virtuoso. She's auditioning to
get into a school, not to graduate from it. I wish the actors looked at
least a little bit convincing with their clarinets, but if Lara and
Clarissa *sounded* much better, I'd be sitting there thinking, "baloney."

For me, the strength of this movie is that, unlike most writers and
directors of movies about the disabled, Caroline Link doesn't patronize her
deaf characters and their helpers by making saints of them. They're
humans, some more flawed than others. Link does a particularly good job of
presenting the political and social issues of the deaf community, much in
the news here in the Washington, D. C. area, where turmoil continues at
Gallaudet University over the decades- old dispute between deaf activists
who think the deaf should cling to their own community and stick to sign
language and equally committed deaf activists who think the deaf should
learn to lip-read, to read the spoken language and to speak aloud.

"Beyond Silence" was a box office disaster in the USA, with a domestic
gross of only US$171,334 in limited release, despite strong reviews and an
Oscar nomination for best foreign film. (Internationally, the movie won a
number of other awards.) The movie did get publicity from influential
reviewers here. Stephen Holden, in "The New York Times" (June 5, 1998),
gave a nuanced review, mostly favorable. He criticized the movie's ending
for sentimentality. I somewhat agree, but I don't think it's a happy
ending so much as a moment of reconciliation offering hope for the future.
However, that hope looks fragile to me, since the ending leaves nearly all
of the basic issues unresolved.

Aside from the vaunted reluctance of US audiences to attend subtitled
movies, several important critics, including Roger Ebert in "The Chicago
Sun-Times" (June 12, 1998, widely read because his column was syndicated),
may have helped doom "Beyond Silence," by praising it to the skies with
smug reviews that insulted the prospective audience. In effect, these
critics shook their fingers in the public's face, shamed us for liking
trash better than art films (Ebert singled out "Godzilla" remakes) and told
us to go see this movie because it's good for us. My instinctive reaction
to that sort of pep talk is antagonism: "Hey, you snob, I *like* Godzilla
movies. What's it to ya?" But I like this movie, too, and I think other
clarinet players also will enjoy it, although the clarinet is not the focus
of the movie.

Lelia Loban
Impeach Cheney first.

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