The Silence
The Silence
| 10 November 1999 (USA)
The Silence Trailers

Khorshid, a blind child growing up in Tajikistan, is constantly distracted by music and sounds. This frequently causes him to be late to his job as an instrument tuner even though he runs the risk of being fired at a time when his family is in danger of being evicted from their house.

Reviews
Harockerce What a beautiful movie!
Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!
Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.
Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
Ironically Unimpressed Like a young Odysseus, little Khorshid travels life's journey in search for his musical Ithaca, wandering into adventures involving modern-age Sirens lurking in every corner, a 'faithful Penelope's' principle in the heart of his despondent mother, a coming of age Calypso falling in love with his unique outlook - and even a Cyclops figure, a grieving ogre to be defeated out of his strictly one-dimensional view.For the film's short running time, our sprite of a protagonist follows lyrical beauty amidst the darkness -- and has me doing exactly the same by following him, completely and utterly charmed by his antithetically stunning in colour, deeply multilayered, poetic innocence.
Andres Salama I saw this film when it was released, more than a decade ago, and I haven't seen it since. So I don't recall all the details. Directed by the famous Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the movie is set in the little known republic of Tajikistan. A former Soviet republic in Central Asia, Tajikistan became independent in 1991 and suffered greatly from poverty and civil war in the first years of independence (in one moving scene in the film, an elderly Russian resident of Tajikistan laments, to the point of almost crying, his economic troubles). The Tajiks are ethnically very close to the Iranians; some say that the Tajik language is just a dialect of Farsi. As shown in the film, Tajikistan seems almost frozen in time, while the movie is set in the late 1990s, a lot of the buildings and cars seem to belong to perhaps the 1950s or 1960s, the floor of most of the houses seems to be made of earth, and the factory where part of the action takes place has an abacus and an old telephone line, but not a computer (I hope that in the time since this film was made, Tajikistan has modernized a bit). The busy bazaars and narrow alleys add to the feeling of a strange place to a western viewer.The protagonist is a blind 10 year old boy, who relates to the world through sounds (the first chords of Beethoven's fifth symphony are a motif throughout the film). Coming from a very poor family, he works in a dilapidated factory tuning the instruments made there (I suppose being blind makes him more able to concentrate on the sounds). A beautiful little girl, who wears tresses and dresses in traditional multicolored Tajik clothes, seems to be his only friend. There is not much else in the movie in terms of action, I suppose that to appreciate this film you just have to sit back and enjoy what you are seeing. The amazingly beautiful color photography certainly helps. It is a poetic movie, but in a good way, unlike in other art movies, this film never feels forced or pretentious.
Gravitino A little blind Tajik boy each day comes late to his job. The reason is his joy of life: The voice of around. He likes to listen to the music of nature, he likes to be as other people to see it. Unfortunately it costs high in his life. He loses his job, just because he loves music. The owner of the house where boy and his mother live tell them to free the apartment and they remain without anything. But boy continues to enjoy the life... The movie makes hearts ache. The song which I liked in this movie so much was "Charo hargiz namepursi?" (Why you never ask?) of Daler Nazarov which performed very well by Oleg Fezov. I recommend this movie to watch for all those who love the life!
naxash The boy Khorshid has to earn a living tuning instruments. He's blind. He does an excellent job, but his boss doesn't think so. Khorshid's mother won't be able to pay the rent if her son gets fired. What can be done? This film both shows the hard life of a blind boy and his mother in Azerbaijan as well as beautiful images -- and lots of music, of course! if you wanna hear Beethoven's 5th, recently spiced up inna hip hop stylee by A+, in a Oriental style, then you gotta check out this beautiful film by Iran's leading filmmaker Mohsen Mahmalbaf. Additionally, _Sokhout_ is social commentary both on life in Eastern countries as well as the relationship between East and West...it is not a coincidence that Makhmalbaf chose Beethoven instead of Classical Persian music.