The Silence

Made for Australian television, The Silence follows grizzled cop Richard Treloar (Richard Roxburgh) as he stumbles upon an unsolved crime dating back to the 1960s while working as a curator for a local police museum – with the bulk of the film subsequently detailing the various complications that ensue as Richard becomes increasingly consumed with solving the decades-old case. Director Cate Shortland – working from a script by Alice Addison and Mary Walsh – has infused The Silence with a jittery visual sensibility that admittedly proves effective at establishing (and sustaining) an atmosphere of authenticity, with Roxburgh’s compelling central performance ensuring that the meandering nature of the storyline is essentially not quite as problematic as one might’ve feared. There reaches a point, however, at which Addison and Walsh’s difficulties getting inside Richard’s head become impossible to overlook, as it’s subsequently almost impossible to work up any real enthusiasm for the character’s ongoing efforts at solving the crime (ie why does he care so much). By the time the reveal of Richard’s motives finally does arrive at the 75 minute mark, The Silence has irreversibly established itself as an egregiously slow-paced piece of work that works neither as a character study nor as a police procedural – which is a shame, certainly, given its plethora of positive attributes (ie Antony Partos’ appropriately moody score, Emily Barclay’s scene-stealing turn as Richard’s sassy assistant, etc).

** out of ****