“Sound of Falling” Explores Generational Trauma and the Weight of Unspoken history
A haunting new film delves into the reverberating effects of trauma across a century, examining the subtle and often unspoken ways in which the past shapes the present. “Sound of Falling,” directed by Katharina Schilinski, offers a nuanced and unsettling portrait of female experience, navigating themes of sexual awareness, abuse, and the enduring power of silence.
Decades later, in the eighties, we meet Erika’s niece Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky), a bespectacled, dark-haired teen-ager, growing up in what is now the German Democratic republic. She casts longing glances toward the river-West Germany,and a different life,lie somewhere beyond.Angelika exudes a precocious sexual awareness, and she notices the creepy stares she gets from her uncle Uwe (Konstantin Lindhorst) and her cousin Rainer (Florian Geißelmann), even if they seem to have no idea. “I frequently enough pretended I didn’t notice how they looked at me,” Angelika says, in voice-over.”But it was actually me who was secretly watching them looking at me.”
This observation-the act of witnessing and internalizing-forms a central thread throughout the film. Her present-day counterpart, an adolescent named Lenka (Laeni Geiseler), soon learns to do the same in the face of male attention. Schilinski suggests there is power in unspoken knowledge, and the performance of innocence and naiveté, for a young girl, can be an instrument of subversion. However, the film avoids simplistic narratives, recognizing that each era carries its own unique burdens.
A History of Hidden Horrors
The film doesn’t shy away from confronting difficult truths. Little Alma reveals, with chilling detachment, her family’s routine practice of sterilizing female servants: a maid, she explains, was briefly sent away to be “made safe for the men.” This casual cruelty underscores a pervasive disregard for women’s autonomy and agency. On rare occasions, voices from different time periods intersect, offering fragmented perspectives on the enduring cycle of trauma. Angelika notes that, after the end of the Second World War, many young women like erika headed towards the river.
m, portrayed with subtle wrenching vulnerability by Geisler-Bading, is an anxious and self-conscious woman, perpetually out of sync with the world. Angelika astutely observes, “You only ever see others from the outside, but never yourself.”
the English-language title, “Sound of Falling,” presents an even deeper enigma. In one pivotal scene, a young girl’s fatal fall from a hayloft is accompanied by complete silence. Is the sound of falling merely the absence of sound? The film subtly references the philosophical riddle of a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it, posing a similar question: can we truly comprehend the joy, sorrow, confusion, and anguish of those who came before us, even if we never knew them? Could our own emotions be the lingering residue of past experiences?
This sense of spectral presence permeates the film, lending it the atmosphere of a ghost story. The farmhouse feels indelibly haunted, and the camera drifts between rooms and time frames with an ethereal grace. Schilinski embraces this spookiness, unapologetically focusing on death and inviting the audience to confront the faces and bodies of the deceased. She is especially fascinated by the early twentieth century’s elaborate farewell rituals,steeped in religion and superstition-a deceased great-grandmother having stones placed over her eyes to facilitate her passage to the afterlife,and Alma’s sister Lia having her eyes sewn open and posed for a family photograph.
The Power of Images and the Question of Identity
The film highlights a time when photographs held immense meaning as material proof of existence. Alma is haunted by a portrait of another sister, who died before her birth, and who bears an uncanny resemblance to herself. Schilinski playfully raises the question of whether they might be the same soul inhabiting different bodies, though she offers no definitive answers. Even her most enigmatic conceits are grounded in a fundamental belief in the power of art to awaken the dead.
