‘Silent Land’, directed by Agnieszka Woszczynska, made its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. This is a story focuses on a Polish couple named Adam (Dobromir Dymecki) and Anna (Agnieszka Zulewska) in a washed-out, sombre relationship between the two, that is left ambiguous in the interpretation of their relationship.
The film starts off where Adam and Anna were on a vacation in Italy, where they rented a property by the ocean. The home looks very luxurious and with an attractive, perfect-looking couple, only for scenes to follow how empty and washed out the whole atmosphere feels. A vacation like in this scene is usually depicted like a great escape to disconnect from the world and enjoy each other’s time together. But the couple, seemingly devoid of any emotion, are simply there, isolated within themselves.
From a character analysis, it appears that Anna seems to be the one “wearing the pants” in the couple’s relationship. Adam seems to be the type of guy that is lost within himself, often distracting away from any previous troubles he has had with Anna. The tensions between the two exude some sort of past issues, that ultimately led to resentment between the couple, yet they still do couple things out of protocol.
Watching them interact with each other looks like they signed some sort of contract to do things a couple is “supposed” to together, like have meals, go on excursions, meet with friends, and of course, sexual intercourse. The scenes between the two doing these things still retains the unsettling demeanour of Adam and Anna throughout the whole film, like as if they have words to exchange from a difficult conversation topic that has not been brought up to address the issue. The bottling of possible anger and refusal to let go of what previously happened has made their characters seem uptight. Because of this such ambiguity, it leaves the audience as the judges of how they interpret the two characters.
The plot of Silent Land is very minimal. What the film does though is set off a scene where a pool maintenance worker’s body discovered from the pool they rented. Authorities were called into questioning the couple and their involvement of the incident that happened. Adam adamantly tells Anna to follow what he says to deny any potential wrongdoings on their part and insist that the pool worker’s death was an accident during their vacation.
This added stress to Adam and Anna being questioned by the Italian police adds another layer to how they handle the situation with authorities and how uncomfortably the couple move forward from this. Not to mention Adam and Anna speaks Polish and English and does not speak Italian when trying to make a statement to the Italian police. On the Italian police side, they just want to get a statement from the two, without going too harsh on possible allegations that they could have saved the pool worker.
One thing to note is that the pool worker was a foreign worker, and there was a scene where it implied that the Italian police was not going to put too much energy in this case, possibly because he was a foreigner. This little shot spoke volumes about how authorities might have a two-tiered system in the treatment of specific people, which is discriminatory, but no one can really do anything about it.
As for the dialogue, it is also very minimal. The cinematography does a great job of showing nice landscapes and environments around Italy combined with the feelings of isolation and tension when Adam and Anna are in frame. There is virtually no background music, but white noise to emphasize the tense interactions between the couple. Adam and Anna were shown having nice dinners, sunbathing by the sea, having sex, and meeting friends throughout the film. The previous sentence sounds like a pleasant experience, but the moment they both talk, it felt small conversations of pointing things out and nothing more. The verbal communication was not in the same wavelengths of what a loving couple would do on a vacation. They just felt like an exchange of words to break the monotony of silence.
If you like silent films, this is probably one that falls close to that category. And by category, its no Charlie Chaplin of silent films. It just feels literally silent. By no means it is a bad thing, the goal of it seems to fit well with the title ‘Silent Land’ itself. This film was made open to interpretation by the audience, to let the viewers in to how the couple was feeling at that current moment. And when it seems like there were going to be answers addressing the ambiguity, it just leaves viewers questioning more about what is actually going on.