{"id":6835,"date":"2025-05-15T23:57:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T23:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/15\/screening-at-cannes-mascha-schilinskis-sound-of-falling\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T23:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T23:57:07","slug":"screening-at-cannes-mascha-schilinskis-sound-of-falling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/15\/screening-at-cannes-mascha-schilinskis-sound-of-falling\/","title":{"rendered":"Screening at Cannes: Mascha Schilinski\u2019s \u2018Sound of Falling\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A scene from Mascha Schilinski\u2019s \u2018Sound of Falling\u2019<\/em> Fabian Gamper\/Studio Zentral<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Mascha Schilinski<\/a>\u2019s sophomore feature <\/span>Sound of Falling<\/span><\/i>, a German farmhouse plays host to the stories of several young girls and women across more than a century. Split between four distinct periods\u2014World Wars I and II, the 1980s, and modern day\u2014Schilinski\u2019s ethereal drama travels elliptically through time, revealing a multi-generational saga steeped in trauma and secrets. It\u2019s a film that portrays great anguish experienced in silence, all within the confines of femininity, through norms which have evolved over a hundred years, but which mirror each other in haunting ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

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SOUND OF FALLING<\/b> \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u00a0<\/strong>(4\/4 stars<\/em>)<\/strong>
Directed by:<\/strong> Mascha Schilinski<\/span><\/strong>
Written by: Mascha Schilinski, Louise Peter<\/span><\/strong>
Starring: <\/strong>Hanna Heckt, Susanne Wuest, Lena Urzendowsky, Luise Heyer, Filip Schnack, Greta Kr\u00e4mer, Laeni Geisler, Luzia Oppermann, Claudia Geisler-Bading, Gode Benedix, Ninel Geiger<\/span>
Running time:<\/strong> 149<\/span> mins.<\/p>\n\n<\/td>\n

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Each segment is rooted in the perspective of one or two central characters\u2014usually sisters, or mothers and daughters\u2014but the connections from one timeline to the next are seldom clarified up front. Rather than laying out a linear plot, <\/span>Sound of Falling<\/span><\/i> jumps back and forth in time, as if caught in a stream-of-consciousness, but using recognizable sensory motifs as its temporal window. In the 1910s, adolescent Alma (Hanna Heckt<\/a>) and her teenage sister Lia (Greta Kr\u00e4mer)\u2014two of the family\u2019s many children\u2014gaze upon photographs of dead family members, both young and old. Their subsequent recollections of farmhouse funerals involve the sounds and images of buzzing flies, a recurring symbol of rot that yanks the movie through the decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1940s, a young woman named Erika (Lea Drinda) becomes fascinated with her one-legged uncle Fritz (Martin Rother), to the point of stealing his crutches and hobbling around the farm, placing herself in the headspace of an amputee. In the 1980s, rebellious teen Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky<\/a>) observes the quiet melancholy of her mother Irm (Claudia Geisler-Bading<\/a>) while dealing with wandering gazes of her cousin Rainer (Florian Gei\u00dfelmann) and his father Uwe (Konstantin Lindhorst). Finally, in the film\u2019s contemporary setting, a new couple moves into the farmhouse, as their playful adolescent daughters, Nelly (Zo\u00eb Baier) and Lenka (Laeni Geiseler), befriend a grieving neighbor their age, the mysterious Kaya (Ninel Geiger<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

On the surface, few of these plots feel directly connected, and the relationship between them is initially vague. Save for Fritz, who briefly appears in the 1910s as a younger man, no two characters seem to cross-pollinate between the timelines, leaving these women\u2019s relationship to one another uncertain\u2014if they\u2019re related at all. However, it soon becomes clear that the logistical details don\u2019t matter all that much, given the spiritual connections between the characters, and the way Schilinski binds them together through reverberating themes told with a deft artistic hand. <\/span>Sound of Falling<\/span><\/i> is a film of morbid fascinations, between the macabre family photographs in the 1910s\u2014taken alongside dead family members propped up like puppets, a<\/span> once-common practice<\/span><\/a>\u2014and the numerous scenes and impressionistic images of young girls submerged underwater, holding their breath, as if chasing death itself.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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A scene from Mascha Schilinski\u2019s \u2018Sound of Falling\u2019 Fabian Gamper\/Studio Zentral<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The film\u2019s youngest characters all seem curious about dying\u2014about what it feels like, and what comes after\u2014though none of their older family members provide satisfying answers. Meanwhile, their teenage counterparts often imagine themselves in vivid, violent scenarios occasionally involving suicide and self-harm, wherein they embrace oblivion. This instinct to embrace absence permeates each story, whether as childlike curiosity, or as a response to depression and malaise. Several key characters are forced to contend with dark family secrets, and with other horrors presented with chilling matter-of-fact-ness, creating distinct echoes between each story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of these echoes are subtle. They\u2019re embodied purely by narrative developments, like the slow reveal of familiar cultures of silence\u2014surrounding incestuous sexual impropriety\u2014across the decades. Other connections, however, exist in an unspoken, ghostly aesthetic space. Schilinski and cinematographer Fabian Gamper often tether their roving camera to specific characters\u2019 points of view, but they also introduce fleeting moments during which the frame has a spectral quality. The protagonists seem to acknowledge this, and make eye contact with the lens (accompanied by brief voiceover), as if in recognition of something invisible in the ether, connecting them to the other characters beyond time.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As the camera floats through space in these moments, the frame becomes blurry, as if zoomed in too tightly, and the film\u2019s usually warm palette fades. It\u2019s as though the camera were being wielded by\u2014or perhaps, were embodying\u2014family ghosts attempting to reach out through time and comfort their kin in their lowest, most vulnerable moments. Schilinski, sound mixer Claudio Demel, and sound editors Billie Mind and J\u00fcrgen Schulz even accompany these chilly visual flourishes with acoustic static, as if the boom mics on set had been turned up to maximum sensitivity in search of hints of the paranormal. It may not be a literal ghost story, but it takes full advantage of cinema\u2019s inherent nature as <\/span>a medium of ghosts<\/span><\/i>\u2014of the past preserved on tape and celluloid.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the film\u2019s most haunting and poignant moments, young, arguably na\u00efve characters like Alma gaze upon the power of photographs to capture the dead and the living in similar hues, with the subjects of some family photos moving quickly enough to become blurs on a physical fabric. Similar moments re-occur in the 1980s, with the advent of Polaroid, as Schilinski self-reflexively zeroes in on the power of images to suggest a world beyond the physical (even if by accident), and to capture liminal moments, spaces, and emotional states of being. By focusing on characters who can seldom put words to their experiences\u2014whether the ravages of war and trauma, the jealousies of adolescence, or the desire to simply no longer exist\u2014<\/span>Sound of Falling<\/span><\/i> marvelously tells a century\u2019s worth of women\u2019s stories by weaving together the psychological, the physical, and even the spiritual, resulting in a dramatic tour de force of mind, body, and soul.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\"Screening<\/p><\/div>\n