CISZKO (SILENCE)

Hungary, 2002, 93 minutes, Colour.
Kinga Preis, Bartosz Opania.
Directed by Michal Rosa.

Silence is the first in a series called The Stigmatised from the screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz. The series treats issues of human identity.

This film opens with children playing after a Mass on Sunday, throwing water at each other - and without intending it, by dropping a vessel into an oncoming car, causing death by accident on the roads. The film focuses on the boy who dropped the vessel as well as the little girl who survived the accident.

The film makes a transition to twenty years later at the end of the 20th century. The girl has grown up into a rather hard cosmetics executive, living a somewhat wild life after a reclusive upbringing. The boy has become a train driver and has kept watch over the woman from her girlhood, collecting photos, knowing all about her. He eventually makes himself known and the film studies the reaction of the woman, her resentments, her wanting to know more about herself, wanting to know more for her daughter who may have inherited glaucoma. The man himself then, still preoccupied with his guilt, comes closer to the woman, has a sexual encounter with her and she becomes pregnant. He crashes his train but eventually gives himself up and the woman visits him in prison, trying to make a decision about the future of the child.

1. A dramatic film about people trying to find identity? Bearing the scars of childhood? The significance of the title, from the point of view of the woman, the man? The silence over the decades?

2. The Polish city settings, the countryside, offices, apartments, nightclubs? The musical score - especially the beat of the clubs?

3. The prologue and the '70s setting, the church, people leaving Mass, the kids squirting water at each other, the boy pursued, hiding on the viaduct, throwing the water, dropping his vessel, causing the accident? The aftermath of the accident, the police, the victims, the little girl, her walking away?

4. The portrait of the woman, her discussions with her friends, at the nightclub, drugs, drinking, dancing, the man's approach to her in the nightclub, her wanting to give herself to him, his rejection of her?

5. Her bewilderment, finding out about him, his giving her the information, the photos? The discovery that he knew so much about her? Her change of hairstyle, checking up on the scar? Searching for him? His personality, audience knowing that he was the boy that caused the accident, his collecting all the information, his being like a platonic guardian angel? Her dismay at his collecting all this information?

6. Her continuing her work, travelling, harsh on some of the employees,
the giving out of samples to the people in the factory, the woman with the burns on her face (and her later returning, having had the operation, and asking for a job - and being given it)? The phone calls from Simon? Her going to see her daughter, being looked after by her grandmother? The love between mother and daughter? The information given about the glaucoma and her getting the daughter's eyes tested, her own?

7. The growing relationship between the two, his giving her the envelope, her putting it in the garbage, the information about the salmonella outbreak at the school, her going back to the car park, getting the key, the photos? The gradual breaking down of the hostilities? Her listening, discovering more about herself? Going on the train with him, his reading from her mother's diary?

8. The sexual relationship, the aftermath, his feelings, crashing the engine, feared dead? Her discovery of her pregnancy? Going to see him in prison, asking where he was, his wandering and then giving himself up? The argument, her pregnancy? Her decision about the child and the future?

9. The credibility of the incidents, the relationship between the two, a woman in her thirties being transformed and discovering more about her past and coming to terms with her future, a man bearing guilt and his trying to deal with it?