NOT A WORD

Germany/Slovenia, 2023, 87 minutes, Colour.

Maren Eggert, Jona Levin Nikolai.

Directed by Hanna Slak.

Keeping silent. Secrets. Reticence. Inability to communicate.

This is a comparatively brief film, essentially a film about a relationship between a mother and son. The son is very much a morose character, morose behaviour – leading to a cinema experience that is morose.

The writer director is of Slovenian background, working in Germany. Dedicating this film to her mother and, in interviews, indicating that she is drawing on her own relationship with her mother as well as with her children. This certainly comes across in the intensity of the scenes between mother and son.

The mother, Nina, is an accomplished orchestra conductor, working throughout the film on Mahler’s 5^th Symphony, with some scenes in rehearsal. She is separated from her husband who does come to spend time with his son. The son, Lars, teenager, has had a difficult experience at school, a girl disappearing, and then the finding of her body. At school, he is sullen with students and teachers, is alone  on an upper floor, opens a window, the audience speculating on his motivations, perhaps depression, then the news that he has fallen from the window. But, he has escaped with concussion. His mother has to rush from rehearsals to the hospital.

The scenes between mother and son are particularly awkward, perhaps younger audiences identifying with Lars, empathetic with his attitudes, while older audiences especially parents, will be identifying with Nina, her attempts to communicate, her experiencing the rebuffs by her son, moody behaviour, trying to jump from a car, discomfort at home.

Then the film moves to the Atlantic coast, in France, a place where the family used to go in the past and Lars was happy, even wanting to go there this time instead of a lake proposed by his mother. The scenery is rather wild, overcast, there are storms, their old boat needing repairs, walks together, separately, little communication.

There is a young girl, daughter of the owner of the local store, friendly with Lars, but seeing struggling, the mothers upset.

The writer-director, as will is the audience, would like some kind of breakthrough for mother and son – and, as we persevere with the difficulties, we discover some kinds of possibilities, whether the mother and son are fated to have a morose relationship all through life.

1. The title, silence, secrets, self-preservation, passive-aggressive silence?
2. The setting, home, mother and son, absent father and his visits, the world of the orchestra, Mahler and his fifth Symphony, rehearsals? The school, little? The visit of the Atlantic coast, the countryside and walks, the boat? Atmosphere?
3. The musical score, the Mahler rehearsal, the themes throughout the film, reflections of characters and situations?
4. Nina and Lars, separation from her husband, caring for her son, his age, quiet, relationship with his father? The newspapers, the story of the missing girl, her body being found, Lars and his relationship with the girl? The effect of her death, at school, with the other children, going to the empty room, the window, falling out, deliberate or not, concussion, hospital, recovery?
5. Nina, her colleagues with the orchestra, the plans and hopes, the sponsors, young conductor and her hopes, the agent, the rehearsals and the music? The interruption, her hurrying to the hospital?
6. Lines, wanting to be with his father, his mother suggesting time away, his rejecting the suggestion of the Lake, is wanting to go to the Atlantic, memories of the past? The going together, accommodation, the landlady and the shop, her daughter, Lars and the interactions with the daughter, the struggle, both mothers apprehensive? Yet the little girl later helping Lars?
7. Tension between mother and son, going for walks, separations, finding of the boat, need of repair, the verbal clashes, silences, the plan to go back, Nina and her phone calls and responsibility for her work, the oncoming storm, preventing the ferry to come? The dilapidated boat, the decision to restore it, Lars and his work, his having some kind effect on him?
8. The return, the possibility for some kind of hope for the future?