pacoh1969 Review of The Silent Storm

The Silent Storm (2014)

Stars occluded the potential and it should never have been allowed outside a dramatic theatre

[5/10 · 24 August 2017]

Like previous reviewers, I sensed a definite air of striving, striving to be something which has long since gone, does not need to be recreated and smacked of arrogance in a directorial debut, which this was. It would have served the producers better NOT to get big names to balance the directors lack of experience unless those big names could add something to the movie. It certainly would have served the viewer better if the skeleton of a fairly obvious feminist superstructure had not poked through the fairly thin skin of plot. And this is another example of a movie relying on external factors/images such wild scenery, panorama shots (often completely irrelevant or thematically unconnected with previous or next scenes) and community decay because some dying industry breathed its last and the locals had become completely dependent on it (I actually find myself stifling a slight yawn as i typed this - it is a little common in movies (pick a movie about closures of coal miner in northern England, "The Grand Seduction" (Newfoundland) etc) and hopefully as a theme will not be revisited unless accompanied by some originality in script). Puritanical, anachronistic Scottish minister included, the characters/stereotypes/clichés read a little like a chapter ("Sco'lund, away wi ya") in a book entitled "Easy Ways to Assemble Stereotypes in one Plot". Because I found it very lowest-common-denominator and clichéd and not only slightly based on a political opinion derived from the deep and meaningful student drunken conversations which in the blink of an eye and with no experience of the world mutates into one of those after dinner drunken middle-class chats which are studies in ignorance. But it could have been made anywhere! Instead of a puritanical Scottosh minister, read Irish Catholic priest, mid-west US, dust-bowl preacher, Scandanavian minister etc. And now you can see why most reviewers think the director was, at least, emulating Bergman, with a bleak view on a bleak time with a bleak future. I've tried to avoid spoilers particularly as I was worried I would confuse my references with other movies, but primarily because the movement or kinetics which does take place, are inconsequential. I don't want to use Irish references too much but the movie could have been made there if the script had been adapted because the pain, references to abuse (patriarchy or otherwise), decay, xenophobia and insanity, could all survive a ferry crossing to Ireland, to any rural or island community, north or south. Having said all of the above, I still watched it, found it somewhat engaging....but I suppose I am a male, in a patriarchal world (regardless of sexual orientation), and a patriarchal world which is somewhat confused by re-definitions and constantly being redefined before we have a chance to identify what the last set of changes were. Not new, not dramatically exciting, not a well-chosen cast, interesting but unimportant scenery, good set decoration and costumes, buoyed up by some of the cast that tried to pull away from the fire in case it burned itself.