Sound of Falling is mesmerizing, vast, and mysterious. Director Mascha Schilinski, who co-wrote the screenplay with Louise Peters, reminds the viewer from the start that our eyes can deceive us, that what we see is not necessarily what is true. Exquisitely detailed and assertively non-linear, the film drifts through time in a German farmhouse, over several decades, focusing primarily on a single protagonist in each era. Death and violence are ever-present, and war, although not for the most part explicitly dealt with, always has an impact. Yet the film itself is sparked by dark humor, playful pranks, and the vivaciousness of youth.
All four protagonists – Alma, Erika, Angelika, and Lenka, are young girls, ranging in age from about 9 to late teens. Their stories are not directly connected, although Alma is probably an ancestor of Erika, while Angelika is Erika’s niece. They are connected through the farmhouse where they live, a place that goes through changes over the years, a place that harbors trauma. And they are connected by the patriarchal culture into which they were born. The film drifts from one narrator to another, creating layers of images, narratives, and time.
The youngest protagonist, from the earliest period, circa early 19th century, is Alma (Hanna Heckt), bright and inquisitive with two blond braids, she is innocent enough to voice many of her questions aloud. Why is there a photograph of a dead child that looks so much like her? She is an avid observer of the world around her, taking in what she sees, even when she does not understand what she is seeing. In Alma’s world, girls and women are the possessions of men, to do with as they please.
As she looks through the keyhole at her mother arranging photographs on the mantle in preparation for All Souls Day, her limited view is a reminder that our view is always limited, whether by a physical obstacle, or one that is emotional or psychological. Inevitably girls look to their mothers, as a foreshadowing of what it means to be a woman. For Alma, this means a mother who suffers from a gagging reflex, a mother who is very silent, and Alma has learned that “blinks mean love.”
For Angelika, a teenager in the GDR of the 1980s, it is a mother who “never knew when to laugh.” She is first encountered in the film on the day she gets her first pair of glasses, and she is as acute an observer as Alma, yet with greater understanding. When her uncle Uwe (Konstantin Lindhorst) places his hand on her leg, she looks uncomfortable but does not protest. The different protagonists experience sexuality – their own and that of others, each in her own age and time, yet there are common threads, such as the male gaze. It is a source of danger, and of a certain kind of power.
Swimming in the river with her cousin Rainer (Florian Geißelmann) Angelika reflects: “I often pretended I didn’t notice they were looking at me, secretly watching them watching me.” The power Angelika wields is that of the oppressed, when she employs her sexuality as a weapon, it hurts her too. Yet she reveals an exuberant defiance throughout.
To counter the male gaze, the female gaze is a significant part of the film, as in certain moments the different protagonists turn to look directly at the camera, at the viewer. Erika’s (Lea Drinda) narrative is a mere fragment, yet she opens the film in a stirring sequence that ends with a slow turn of her head, a hurt look that soon transforms into a slight, yet knowing smile. In that moment, as she breaks the fourth wall, the viewer becomes her witness.
Lenka (Laeni Geiseler) is a young adolescent in the present day. Her family, originally from Berlin, move into the farmhouse, which is now empty, with plans to renovate it. Lenka’s mother Christa laughs with her daughters and wields a sledgehammer to tear down the old to make way for the new. Yet Lenka too knows desire, fear, and regret, reflecting “too bad you never know when you’re at your happiest.”
The film is in many ways a reflection on memory, the narratives and trauma passed on from one generation to the next, the stories that live inside the walls. It is a reminder that we are all unreliable narrators of our own lives, and of the world around us, endeavoring to create meaning and fill the gaps left by fragments of images and words, never certain if our memory of an event represents the event itself, or what we hoped or feared.
