It's All So Quiet

Nanouk Leopold adapted Gerbrand Bakker's novel 'Boven is het stil' into a screenplay and directed this cinematic masterpiece IT'S ALL SO QUIET – a perfect balance between silence and the spoken word that results in one of the most tender examinations of life, death and love and the interstices few others have revealed.

Leopold's decision to interplay nature as a place where all animals including man find shelter, food, caring and love makes this visual and very quiet film indelible in the memory.

Helmer (Jeroen Willems) is a single farmer in his fifties who lives with and cares for his aged, bedridden father (Henri Garcin) in the Dutch countryside. His working days are marked by the visits of milk collector Johan (Wim Opbrouck), a man of his own age for whom Helmer holds a secret fascination – a mutual need is evident but unspoken. One day Helmer decides to renovate the house, buying himself a new double bed and moving his father upstairs. His life gains even more momentum when adolescent farmhand Henk (Martijn Lakemeier) is hired to assist, understudies Helmer's techniques for farming and adds some needed cleaning and caring for the farm: he also finds Helmer attractive and attempts to be physical one night – the result of which changes Helmer's thoughts and desires. In this battle of wills between two powerful personalities the father, once domineering and now in decline, and the son, preparing to live his own life when his father is gone what is left unsaid takes precedence over dialogue. But when unexpected words do come to Helmer late in the film, their quiet force is indisputable. The scene when his father finally dies with Helmer at his side is inordinately touch in it very quiet manner. Henk has left, Helmer returns to his farming chores, and at his father's burial, Johan returns and we are left to wonder what will change.

Leaves, cornfields, barren trees, a raven, sheep, cows and silence make this thoughtful paean to life immensely satisfying, Very Highly Recommended.

a cold movie. interesting not exactly for story but for wise manner to create its atmosphere. a man and his sick old father. that is all. slices of silence, dialogs as gray circles, the slow story, fragments of past. a movie as support of reflection. or picture of society. or, only, as need of freedom. a film who reminds many for its spirit, images or relation between characters. but it remains different. for the force of suggestion. for beginning and end image, for the love-cruelty-fatigue mixture.a remarkable performance by Jeroen Willems.and inspired music. one of that stories about small ordinary stuffs . in perfect science of exposure.

This is a Dutch German co production presented in Dutch with an original title of "Boven is het stil". It is about Helmer who is a farmer who lives with his bedridden father. He looks after the farm and the old man with a kind of determined grimace. He seems to shun anything that would make him happy- having created a world for himself where may as well be totally alone.

Then he hires a young helper in the shape of Henk (Martijn Lakemeier – 'the young boy from 'Winter in Wartime'). This seems to bring a change and as well as looking after the farm he starts to think about himself and awakens feelings he is forgetting to suppress.

Now it is hard to say very much about this without spoiling the plot or making it appear to be a bit dull. This is not for action fans or those who like everything spelled out. There are a lot of silences here with little actually happening. This I felt highlighted the lack lustre existence and the loss of opportunity that Helmer is going through. Some would call this 'lyrically paced'; but it does have its moments and it has a brooding quality that made me want to watch it to the end. And I must say I am glad I did, this is one for people who like their films to sometimes be a bit different.

a son. and his sick old father. and nothing else. one of films for reflect about the importance of small things. about decisions and about life as a broken window. about every day gestures. and about expectation. a film who could be defined as gray, boring, too slow, strange, bizarre. but it is one of necessaries portraits of a reality so easy to ignore or see it as personal. because it is a film about the status of the other. without a message, without desire to convince. only to remind. this is the motif why, after its end, the only clear memory about the film remains the atmosphere.

The work of the Dutch director Nanouk Leopold isn't know here at all. Perhaps that's because the films she makes are not only uncommercial but also uncompromising. "It's all so quiet", which she made in 2013, is, for the most part, a depressingly grim study of loneliness and sexual repression as well as of old age and family relations, in this case between a father and son. Helmer is a farmer living with, and caring for, his old and infirm father. There doesn't appear to be much love or affection between them; it's as if Helmer can't wait for his father to die.

Nothing much happens. Much of the time we simply watch Helmer go about his daily routine, at first alone and then with the help of handsome young farmhand Henk. There is very little communication between any of the characters; this is a very austere picture, shot in bleached colours that are almost monochromatic. Once upon a time you might have said Bresson or Dryer could have made this, (Helmer also keeps donkeys), and it isn't called "It's all so quiet" for nothing. This is a film in which the sounds of silence dominate. Not easy viewing then, but remarkable nevertheless.