Silenced
(2011/CJ Entertainment DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: C
Dealing
with child molestation is a not easy, as the recent Penn State
scandal shows. One of the reasons the
school was able to cover it up was money and the other conformist
complicity. Of course, there were also
terroristic threats (either by people with power or by supporters of the school
who blindly back it like mindless Nazis) and then there is hiding behind the
unthinkable and using something so ugly and doing something so ugly that no one
wants to talk about it than the crime went on for many years. Hwang Dong-Hyuk’s Silenced (2011) is about a chillingly similar real life event.
Taking
place in a school for the deaf in South Korea, a new teacher (Gong
Yoo) arrives, but things do not seem well.
Children are acting oddly, some of which look abused. He has to pay the men running the place a
small fortune just to have the job and is told the children are being
“disciplined” and not abused, yet he may not be certain. Then things get worse as it is more obvious
something is wrong, so he tries to do something about it, but he runs into the
same resistance of a culture of silence, power and abuse that characterizes the
other scandal.
Despite
that this is based on a real incident, the actual film (shot in HD) actually
has some major issues and problems. For
one thing, the film has far more footage and scenes of abuse than is really
necessary, including some with young naked children that is shocking, but that
combined with the look of the camerawork (including darkness in the frame) and
the new teacher’s inability to realize what is going on even when it is
happening in front of his face is so badly portrayed here, that this too often
has the language of a horror film in the wrong way and (worse) wallows so much
in the abuse that it becomes borderline child porn and/or a guide on how to
abuse and terrorize said children on some level intended or not.
Perhaps I
am missing something about the culture and society, but even with that
considered, the final cut here and its screenplay betray the outrage on some
level and any intent to deal with the subject matter in all of its ugliness
backfires on some level; a real problem for a story about such serious subject
matter. However, with so many (too many)
child-in-jeopardy thrillers and horror films of late and other releases that
have screwed up dealing with the subject (Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones comes to mind), we are getting a disturbing cycle
of tales that fail badly to deal with this subject matter.
I don’t
doubt most people involved in this were sincere in portraying the events and
the ugly turn out that has so far resulted, but based on the content and form
of what we get, Silenced betrays its
intents in the worst possible ways without being an exploitation work or
cynical piece of trash.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image is a little soft, but consistent for
what we get and the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 is sometimes quiet, sometimes
dialogue-based, a little more towards the front speakers and sometimes more in
the center channel than I would have liked, but it is well recorded enough.
Extras
include Poster Photoshoot, Trailer, Still Gallery, two featurettes (The School, The Children) and Deleted Scenes with Director’s Commentary.
- Nicholas Sheffo
