Speak No Evil: A Nihilistic View of Humanity
6 Comments
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Larame says:
Liked your analysis of the film…but you should probably watch or re-watch “Compliance”. I thought this movie was very involving and had me shouting at my TV screen, and that’s good enough for me. I would have ended the “friendly” relationship when Patrick calls Bjorn a hero for retrieving Ninus on the streets of Italy but then we wouldn’t have a movie. Nice touch with the stoning at the end (some kind of biblical thing there relating to some kind of sin). It seems a genre of horror where you remember those over-polite incidents in your life and you fantasize just how far along it can go. Thanks for your review.
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reagan@yourfilmprofessor.com says:
Thanks so much for your positive reinforcing comments! I have seen “Compliance” and remember liking it — and also “shouting at my TV screen” — but it has been a while and don’t remember it very well, so I’ll check it out again at some point. Thanks for the recommendation! And I am so with you: I would have thought Bjorn suspicious right from the beginning; he seemed to be trying too hard to slither his way into Patrick’s good graces. But, as you smartly say, the horror genre is all about exploring these nightmarish hypothetical scenarios. And, hey, as I say in my blog post, there is so much promise in this interesting focus. My hope is that the American remake corrects the problems in the original and gives us a more satisfying finale. Thanks again for your thoughts!
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Cyn says:
The movie is a satire. A movie doesn’t have to have comedic elements to be a satire. A satire simply is displaying an exaggerated behavior (close to reality) in order to make a point. But instead of reflecting on the fact that your definition of satire might be not be totally right you choose to call it a flaw in the movie, and that’s a shame.
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Hey, I totally agree with you! And I do say that in my post. Here is what I write:
“Still, this film doesn’t feel like a satire to me. Satires tend to call attention to their satirical nature, through biting comedy or over-the-top exaggeration or through some other element (didacticism, over-the-top acting, self-referential filmmaking, etc.) that breaks the realism.”
As I say above, comedy isn’t the only way to call attention to satire, “over-the-top exaggeration or through some other element (didacticism, over-the-top acting, self-referential filmmaking, etc.) that breaks the realism” can do that as well.
I mention one of the most famous satires of all time, Jonathan Swift’s infamous “A Modest Proposal,” a satirical essay suggesting that a way to ease the burden of poor children is to feed them to elites, a satire that is most definitely NOT comedic.
I should add here that there are some “horror films” that could also be called satires (American Psycho, Funny Games, etc.) and are (mostly) not comedic, instead breaking from realism in other ways, e.g., through exaggeration, direct address, deconstructing realism, didactic commentary, and so on.
As I go on to say in my post, for me Speak No Evil stays on a too realistic sensibility to be called a satire, but you are in what may be the majority who think it is, so you are in good company. It is an interesting debate. Thanks for letting me clarify my position!
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FoundTheMovieOk says:
And it isn’t that far fetched after all is it?
In this day and age we got normal people (and even victims of terrible crimes) withhold key information about a perpetrator, robber, killer, etc to avoid looking impolite or socially incorrect. Not only withhold but sometimes even steer away by saying that a criminal x or y spoke another language than the one they heard the perpetrator speak, throwing off rails police investigations.
Suicidal empathy is a term I have started to hear very recently and after reading the dissections on this movie, it lands even better now.
Ultimately, not standing up for fear of breaking societal norms and politeness allows for the madness to continue in the movie, and just like it happened in real life regarding the omission of the criminal’s descriptions.
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Maybe not! And I must say you make a great case for giving this film value. However, as I get at in my blog post, I think the film only partly gets at the value of this disconcerting facet of the human condition. That is, as I say in my blog post, there IS this interrogation of this phenomenon in the film, but because of the many glaring contrivances and the extremes the film goes to, and, most importantly, that the filmmakers rope in so many families – suggesting that this is not a phenomenon but a norm – the film goes from a sophisticated and complex interrogation of this phenomenon, to more of a film using this phenomenon largely for exploitation reasons. In any case, it is a good debate and you do a fantastic job of making the case for why this film could be considered important. Thanks so much for the response!
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