Silentium

Yesterday night, I went to see Silentium with M., P. & S. Silentium is an Austrian thriller set in a Salzburg catholic boarding school where quite a bit of foul play is at work. No spoilers given.

I liked the movie for a lot of reasons. The detective is an ambivalent character tending towards being a loser, a bit similar to Inspector Rebus. There's a lot of terse, dark humour - occasionally you might just choke on it, though. The humour goes together well with the somber mood, supported by the odd soundtrack, a hint of which you get on the website. The camera direction is rather conventional, but there are some provocative scenes which religious watchers will not approve of. So, it is not likely to be played in the more religious countries, even if well translated. Ah, translation: In principle, the movie's language is German, but because of the actors' heavy dialects, some sections were virtually unintelligible, so German subtitles would have been good! They usually do that with Swiss German films, so why not with Austrian ones?

So, overall, very much worth watching, even though the artsy cinema's seating really is outrageously uncomfortable indeed. Presumably, the play the best movies there in order to attract at least some people!

Btw, I am happy to say that I haven't fallen victim to any April Fools jokes yesterday, although there were loads of it around. Most of them were awfully obvious, but one sticks out as rather funny: the local tram operator proposed to introduce a First Class section in their transport contraptions, together with white gloved food service staff and all.