Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Mascha Schilinski
Starring: Hanna Heckt, Lena Urzendowsky, Laeni Geiseler, Susanne Wuest, Luise Heyer, Lea Drinda
One of the theories put forth to explain "haunted houses" posits that a building can act as a sort of psychic recording device. Memories implant themselves in the walls, and those walls often record moments of extreme trauma which are then played back and mistaken for ghosts (for further exploration of this idea I recommend the 1972 British TV movie The Stone Tape).
The East German farm at the centre of Mascha Schilinski's Sound of Falling would appear to be such a receptacle. Trauma lingers here, waiting to be unleashed on successive generations of young women, the horrors of history threatening to repeat themselves. Sound of Falling isn't a horror movie, though it is a movie filled with horrors, and it isn't a ghost story, but it's very much a story of a haunting. Few people are as haunted by history as the Germans, and Schilinski suggests a race of people tormented by lingering national and personal trauma that can't easily be recorded over like an unfashionable pop song.
Schilinski's film plays out over four intercut and overlapping time periods, the drama set entirely within the grounds of a modest farm in what became known as East Germany for a period of the 20th century. The central figure of each timeline is a girl, and their obsessions are largely of the sex and death variety.
During WWI the farm is home to a large family, and our protagonist here is seven-year-old Alma (Hanna Heckt). Following a Lutheran ritual to honour the dead, Alma becomes obsessed with a photograph of another little girl also named Alma who passed away when she was her age. Alma becomes convinced that she too isn't long for this world. Much of this timeline is also concerned with Alma's teenage brother Fritz (Filip Schnack), and the circumstances that lead to him losing a leg.
Decades later, during another World War, we find a now middle-aged Fritz (Martin Rother) confined to a bed on the farm. His young niece Erika (Lea Drinda) has developed a romantic fascination with her tortured uncle, binding one of one her own legs in an attempt to feel what he's going through.
In the 1980s, the farm is now behind the GDR border. Teenager Angelika's (Lena Urzendowsky) burgeoning sexuality is exploited by her abusive uncle Uwe (Konstantin Lindhorst), and she taunts her infatuated cousin Rainer (Florian Geißelmann).
The fourth timeline takes us to the present where 12-year-old Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) has moved to the now run down farm with her hipster parents (Luise Heyer, Lucas Prisor) and her five-year-old sister Nelly (Zoë Baier). Lenka befriends the enigmatic Kaya (Ninel Geiger), a slightly older girl who recently lost her mother.
Without resorting to any editing tricks, Schilinski draws parallels between the girls in all four timelines. There is a sense that tragedy awaits them all, and many of the adults and other children around them succumb to their own tragic fates. While Alma lives in fear of death, thoughts of suicide permeate the other timelines. The girls find themselves drawn to the scenes of previous horrific incidents as though beckoned by the long fingers of the past. A river on the outskirts of the farm represents a potential freedom, though perhaps at the cost of an non-refundable release.
Sound of Falling is a gruelling but ultimately rewarding experience. There is some staggeringly impressive work both in front of and behind the camera here. It's immaculately cast, with every performer dropped into just the right timeline. The people here look like products of their time, wearing their beatings less visibly as Germany becomes more outwardly civilised over the decades.
Schilinski establishes the geography of her film's limited setting in a manner that makes us anxious when characters approach certain corners, so aware are we of the ghosts that linger. Fabian Gamper's camerawork has a spectral quality of its own, often floating like the ghost POVs of Kevin Tenney's Witchboard or Steven Soderbergh's recent Presence. The sound design echoes the electrical hum favoured by David Lynch to suggest a lingering unease in American suburbia, here creating the feeling that something malevolent is bubbling under the surface of this land.
There is a sense in the final passage, however, that Schilinski and co-writer Louise Peter are too concerned with the idea that their audience may not have been able to pick up on their film's themes. They resort to a series of voiceovers in what feels like a panicked attempt to hammer everything home in case we haven't been paying attention for the last two hours. But for anyone engaged with Schilinski's visual filmmaking, the message is clear: a nation doesn't change its spots; it merely paints over them.
Sound of Falling is in UK/ROI cinemas from March 6th.
