Silent Friend is an unusual work, told in three segments, about the ways in which memory and recognition work, both between people and in a thematic or metaphorical sense. Here, the story is about a series of scientists and their interactions with a single Ginkgo tree, at a university in Germany. The three tales are set in 1980, 1972 and 2020. Each date is important because of the social, historical and cultural flashpoints which occurred during those periods.
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Trees can live a very long time, observing, if that is a word to use, and recording what happens around them. The records we are aware of are through soil and the growth of the rings of the tree, yet here, it is suggested that maybe trees hold a level of sentience. It is not as fantastical as it seems, given the ways in which certain mushrooms and other plants have been known to communicate with one another. Here, Tony Leung plays a neuroscientist who finds himself in COVID lockdown, desperate to return to his stalled research on infant brain waves and yet searching for something to reignite his passion and curiosity.
This is juxtaposed with the other two stories, one set in 1908, about a young woman who has come to the university to be their first female professor, and the other, set during 1972, centered on a pair of students in which one is conducting an experiment about the response of plants to outside stimulation. Each story connects to the other in ways more thematic than direct, other than the setting and the Ginkgo tree. Each segment builds on the other, collapsing and pushing into and out of the others.
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The result is a work that is overly ambitious, sometimes too obvious but very lovely to behold and which poses a set of fascinating questions about how humans interact with each other and the world around them. It is a film told in such a way as to occasionally try one’s patience but if patience is found there are deeply rewarding pleasures to be had. The photography is excellent, with each period near flawlessly captured through a combination of color, shadow and level of image grain.
For all the positive qualities of the physical filmmaking, the performances and the thematic consistency, the film does struggle immensely in terms of pacing. This is most evident in the way each story does not so much reach a conclusion as simply ends. Each segment has far too similar an end, as well, with viewers potentially feeling left wanting more, and not because they desire it. Rather, because there appear to be gaps in the storytelling. Further, the film could have benefited from some change in tone from story to story, rather than all three essentially being a riff on the exact basic premise.
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That said, what we have is worth seeing. The performances, especially by Tony Leung and Luna Wedler, are compelling, and they play the two most fully formed human beings. Indeed, that might be another issue in the film. We have tremendous themes and interesting characters, but too many of them remain sketches or serve to further the plot or story rather than existing on their own or being given any gravity of their own. It is also a film where the first half hour or so may trick some viewers into believing they are watching a masterpiece, when the truth is, they are seeing instead a film that is very good, very unique in some ways, but ultimately fails to deliver as fully on the promise of its premise as it ought to have done. Still, for those who seek something to make them think about existential issues, a must watch.
Silent Friend is now playing in select theaters.
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