Sound of Falling is divided into four distinct time periods, set almost entirely on one patch of German farmland.Fabian Gamper/Supplied
Sound of Falling
Directed by Mascha Schilinski
Written by Mascha Schilinski and Louise Peter
Starring Hanna Heckt, Claudia Geisler-Bading and Laeni Geiseler
Classification N/A; 155 minutes
Opens in select theatres Jan. 23
Critic’s Pick
In 2024, Robert Zemeckis, a director increasingly accustomed to using cinema as a radical tool of high-concept aesthetic experimentation, delivered the drama Here, which chronicled thousands of years in human history through the prism of one static camera placement fixed on a single plot of land. It was a bold gambit whose visual gains were wiped out by Zemeckis’s tendency for emotional goop. But I couldn’t help but flash back to Here while watching Sound of Falling, Mascha Schilinski’s similarly minded but far more impactful study of time and place.
Mascha Schilinski's second feature film creates a true art-house epic.Fabian Gamper/Supplied
Given the projects’ production timelines, there is no feasible way that Germany’s Schilinski was influenced by or even aware of Zemeckis’s film. Yet both filmmakers seem uniquely haunted by history, and how physical spaces can absorb the pains and pleasures of their inhabitants – program both movies on a double bill entitled “If These Walls Could Talk,” and you’ve got a real evening ahead of you.
Split into four distinct time periods – yet with their narratives constantly crisscrossing over the other – Sound of Falling is set (almost) entirely on the same patch of German farmland, where several generations of the same family endure struggles both meagre and impossibly large.
Just ahead of the First World War, there is Alma (Hanna Heckt), who suffers in silence as her family endures various crises, including a severe injury suffered by her older brother Fritz (Filip Schnack). Near the end of the Second World War, Erika (Lea Drinda) and her sister Irm (Claudia Geisler-Bading) struggle to keep their curiosities about the world outside their farmstead to themselves, slowly pushing the boundaries of their conservative family, which includes a now-fortysomething Fritz (Martin Rother), uncle to the siblings.
Lena Urzendowsky plays a teenager falling into depression in 1980s East Germany.Fabian Gamper/Supplied
In the 1980s, with the home now classified as being in East German territory, Irm’s teenage daughter Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky) pushes the boundaries of adolescence further, falling into a deep depression. Finally, in the 2020s, the 12-year-old Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) seeks an alternative to her own loving but perhaps too conventional familial environment.
In just her second feature, Schilinski creates a true art-house epic, haunting and lyrical. What might have come off as an eyebrow-raising trick of construction – shtick, almost – is elevated by the director’s sincere commitment to the conceit, a feat of editing as much as it is shooting. Every moment delicately, profoundly bleeds into the next – the audience isn’t so much challenged by the structure as it is enthralled. Like the most meticulously maintained farmhouse, every element and corner of the film is handled with great care by its caretaker, down to the sound design, which manages to find poetry in the sound of a buzzing fly.
Zemeckis, and every other director of such renown, would do well to next time follow Schilinski’s blueprint to the letter.