Set in the botanical garden of a medieval town in Germany, Silent Friend links three stories over different time periods. Source: Australian Catholics.
American poet Joyce Kilmer wrote: “I know that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree”. Writer-director Ildiko Enyedi endorses this sentiment with visuals of a magnificent ginkgo tree in the grounds of Marburg University.
This complex film opens with images of waves on screens, an emerging flower, a baby’s face and we meet Tony (Leung), a professor, mending a toy.
He is the first of the film’s three central characters. Tony is visiting Germany to lecture when the Covid-19 pandemic leaves him stranded in the country.
The professor is interested in the workings of the brain, contrasting adult focus and the more scattered baby’s response.
In his isolation, he becomes interested in plants, life in the trees, setting up equipment to measure sound responses in the huge tree, and collaborating by zoom with a French scientist who sends him specimens.
The other two characters are a young woman, Grete (Wedler) in 1908 and a young man, Hannes, (Brumm) in 1972. Their stories are intercut throughout the film, the development of their research and experiments, stages of success and challenges.
Grete’s 1908 story is short in black and white. Marburg has just introduced female students, much to the chagrin of some arrogant and chauvinistic professors. Grete is studying the theories of Linnaeus, plants, their individuality, their relationships, male and female. After being kicked out of her accommodation, Grete finds work assisting a local photographer.
He helps her understand many of the details and styles of lighting and photography. As the assistant, she is successful, photographing the plants.
The 1972 episode is lighter and more colourful. Hannes grew up on a farm, and is not interested in plants or botany. However, he meets a young woman who is doing an experiment, recording the vibrations and sounds of a potted geranium.
When she goes on a trek, he takes care of the geranium, becomes more interested in the technology for measuring the sound, the project almost spoilt by students staging a sit-in against the authorities and who invade the room with the plant.
The impact of the film is the interweaving of these stories, love of science, love of nature and study of nature, discovering the mysteries of nature, trees, plants, the theorists of previous centuries and their contemporary applications.
Review by Peter Sheehan, Jesuit Media
Silent Friend: Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Luna Wedler, Enzo Brumm, Lea Seydoux. Directed by Ildiko Enyedi. 147 minutes. Rated M (Drug use and nudity)
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Silent Friend (Australian Catholics)
