The Secret Life of Words (2005)

A hearing impaired factory worker gives up her first holiday in years and instead travels out to an oil rig, where she cares for a man suffering from severe burns.

Director:

Isabel Coixet

Writer:

Isabel Coixet

Stars:

Sarah Polley, Tim Robbins, Sverre Anker Ousdal

25 wins & 15 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Sarah Polley	...	Hanna
Tim Robbins	...	Josef
Sverre Anker Ousdal	...	Dimitri (as Sverre Ousdal)
Javier Cámara	...	Simon
Danny Cunningham	...	Scott
Dean Lennox Kelly	...	Liam (as Dean Lenox Kelly)
Daniel Mays	...	Martin
Emmanuel Idowu	...	Abdul
Eddie Marsan	...	Victor
Steven Mackintosh	...	Doctor Sulitzer
Julie Christie	...	Inge
Reg Wilson	...	Factory Manager
Leonor Watling	...	Josef's Friend's Wife
Daphne Brown	...	Old Lady on Bus
Muriel Hobson	...	Old Lady on Bus

Storyline

Hannah, who wears a hearing aid, is forced to go on holiday. On holiday she manages to find a job: caring for Josef, a burn victim on an oil rig who temporarily lost his sight, until he's stable enough to be transferred. There is almost no one on the rig, except a cook, an oceanographer and a few others out at sea. Hannah tends to Josef and he slowly breaks her shell of silence.

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Plot Keywords:

oil rig | burn victim | yugoslav wars | unfaithfulness | father son relationship | 

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Did You Know?

Trivia

Even though they knew when they were cast that their characters had a homosexual romantic relationship, Isabel Coixet said that the actors were really reluctant to kiss when shooting the scene, so she had to filmed it the way you see in the movie.

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Goofs

If an employee requires medical treatment on an off-shore installation he would immediately be evacuated off.

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Quotes

Inge: Before the holocaust, Adolf Hitler called all of his collaborators together and in order to convince them that he could get away with his plan he asked them who remembers the extermination of the Armenians? That's what he said. Thirty years later nobody remembered the million Armenians exterminated in the cruelest possible way.

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Connections

Referenced in Mr. Nobody (2009)

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Soundtracks

Codicia
Written by Chop Suey

User Reviews

Not the most social film in the world

I have a feeling this may be one of those movies like 'The Goddess of 1967', a movie people will either love (for its beauty) or hate (and claim it's hollow trash that pretends to be intellectual).

'La Vida' is a movie that's largely based on an oil rig. An explosion has occurred, killing one guy and badly injuring a man who tried to help. The problem is: where can you find a nurse that wants to work on an oil rig? Enter Hanna Amiran, a deaf girl who has worked in a factory for four years without taking a day off. Now Hanna has been forced by the unions to take some time off. Hanna, seemingly unaware of what a vacation is, books herself a stay in a shabby hotel and is eating Chinese food when she overhears a man who's working for the oil company: "Where can we find a nurse that wants to work on an oil rig?" Hanna goes up to him and says: "I'm a nurse."

Hanna is not the most social person in the world. That she's deaf is helpful: if she doesn't want to communicate she turns off her hearing aid. Which makes her an ideal person to work on an oil rig: the captain, the cook, the biologist... all of them are pretty introvert. The thing is: when a new person is brought to the oil rig, they do want to have some social contact. But not Hanna. She's even less revealing to Josef, the man she has to nurse. Josef is badly burnt and because of the fire has lost the ability to see for a couple of weeks. Not being able to see anything, he wants to talk the whole time. Which seems to upset Hanna. She tells him his name is Cora, she lies about the colour of her hair...

Throughout the movie you'll see the secretive layers of Josef and Hanna peel off. And all of it will come to a painful climax long before the movie ends.

One of the other people on the oil rig is Simon (Daniel Mays of 'Funland'), who's sent to study the waves violently bashing against the rigs. In his own time he also studies mussels (which are affected by the pollution) and hopes that one day when the oil has been pumped out of the sea the rigs will be used to make the water cleaner. That is the bit that makes me feel some will dismiss this movie as pretentious nonsense. Hanna's history, which I won't reveal, is also a heavy subject. And yes, maybe this movie wants too much, but Coixet does manage to find a setting to make her story work and enough setting to back it up convincingly.

Maybe the movie ends a bit too positive, but after what we've heard it's okay to lose reality and dream for the best.

Polley and Robbins are very good, as are the rest of the supporting cast. The childish voice-over you hear at the beginning and the end of the movie has raised a couple of questions on internet fora as to which character it is. Some of the comments on those fora made me want to see the movie again. Which, whatever way you put it, is always a good sign.

It's hard to describe this movie as we're not dealing with 'actions', but rather the 'aftermath of actions'. Which is why the movie is both silent and talkative. Which is why we're voyeurs trying to peel off the layers too. The best (and possibly the only) way to describe this movie is by using one word: intense.

Details

Official Sites:

Mongrel Media [Canada] Official site [Spain]

Country:

Spain Ireland

Language:

English Danish

Release Date:

21 October 2005 (Spain)

Also Known As:

The Secret Life of Words

Filming Locations:

Donaghadee, County Down, Northern Ireland, UK

Box Office

Budget:

$5,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$5,309, 17 December 2006

Gross USA:

$20,678

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$6,410,058

Company Credits

Production Co:

El Deseo, Hotshot Films, Mediapro

Technical Specs

Runtime:

115 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1