DEAD SILENCE
US, 1991, 88 minutes, Colour.
Renee Estevez, Carrie Mitchum, Lisanne Falk.
Directed by Peter O'Fallon.
Dead Silence is a film which focuses on three young college students and the style of the film is geared to college students identifying with the characters and with the moral dilemmas they find themselves in.
Renee Estevez is the daughter of Martin Sheen and Carrie Mitchum is the granddaughter of Robert Mitchum.
The film shows three different young women having a spring break in Palm Springs and suddenly the perpetrators of a hit-run death. The moral dilemma is whether they go to the police or whether they run. The central character, a young journalist, is for going to the police. Her friend, an ambitious law student, does not want her life ruined. The third young woman is away without permission, fears her father and is very nervy and indecisive - especially as the car was hired with her credit card.
They decide not to go to the police and suffer the consequences. The young journalist is actually asked to report on the finding of the body and the investigation. The nervous young woman eventually kills herself, leaving the assured young woman in a limbo, the police knowing and her life being ruined. The film is a popular TV moral fable.
1. Telemovie for the home audience, the younger audience who would identify with the characters and the situations?
2. The university settings, homes? Spring break at Palm Springs and all the exuberant goings-on? The desert, the police investigations? The media?
3. The title, its reference to the action and decisions of the young women?
4. The film taking its time in setting up the characters, their bonds, studies together, the journalist and her hopes, the ambitious law student wanting to get into Columbia and failing, the wealthy girl and the challenge for her to graduate? Their going on the spring break - and the young girl not telling her father? The gaudiness and behaviour of the spring break, the drinking? Their drink-driving and fooling around on the desert road?
5. The accident itself, the shock, the effect on their emotions, consciences? The different responses of each young woman? The lawyer taking the body into the ditch, the decision not to go to the police? Their return to the hotel, covering up, getting the car repaired and paying big money, cash?
6. The two girls returning to the university and graduating? Sunnie and her applying for the job as a journalist, her having to start early? The irony of her being asked to report on the finding of the corpse, the investigation? Her questions, the phone calls to Zanna and Joan? Her employer realising that something was wrong, inviting her to talk to her?
7. The party for the graduation, Joan's father and his gift? Her being unable to, the phone calls, the decision to go to Palm Springs when the policeman wanted to interview her about her credit card (the same policeman who had caught her at the scene of the crime)? Zanna and her rationalisations, studying all the legal cases where accessories to crime were present and whether they were guilty or not?
8. In Palm Springs, Sunnie and her reporting, talking to her boss? Joan and her gradual despair, feeling she was deceived by Zanna, her previous dive into the pool and her killing herself in the motel pool? Zanna, her shock at the suicide, talking to Sunnie?
9. Sunnie's decision to go to the police - and the film ending? What would happen? Her moral responsibility? Extenuating circumstances? The future for Zanna?
10. A moral fable, television style, to jog consciences and ask audiences what they would do in similar circumstances?
