The previous adage ‘Historical past doesn’t repeat itself, but it surely does rhyme’ lies on the coronary heart of Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Fallingby which 4 generations of life play out throughout the confines of a rural farmhouse in north Germany. Over the course of a century Schilinski glints between the lives of Alma (Hanna Heckt), Erika (Lea Drinda), Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky) and Lenka (Laeni Geiseler), charting their younger lives on the flip of the century, the midst of the Second World Battle, the German Democratic Republic through the 1980s and the current nation respectively. Between childhood video games and the primary blush of romantic feeling, political upheaval creeps in, in addition to the recurring weight of gendered sexualisation and the aimlessness of rising up with out sure ambition.
Fabian Gamper’s cinematography supplies some atmospheric gravitas, drifting and dreamlike – comparisons to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides or Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock are extraordinarily tempting, however not fairly on the mark, as Schilinski and co-writer Louise Peter purpose for one thing stranger and somatic, honing in on the tensions that start to blossom as a little lady turns into a younger girl, and imprecise impressions and understandings change into clearer and extra fastened. The gauzy qualities of Gamper’s work additionally complement the movie’s opaqueness, withholding even because it lets us peer in via the farmhouse home windows and observe the quartet of ladies’s personal moments.
This wilful obfuscation could frustrate some viewers – Schilinski appears solely disinterested in making Sound of Falling simple to decode – however maybe its mysteries and half-truths mirror the fact of our lives in relation to people who had been lived on the exact same land years earlier than. We are able to by no means actually perceive the previous, and maybe by no means actually perceive one another with whole readability. As a substitute kinship is a feeling that’s struck via shared feelings and parallel experiences. The deep specificity of Schilinski’s 4 protagonists doesn’t forestall them from turning into avatars for a extra common feminine expertise, and the query of the historical past that exists throughout the 4 partitions we name house is compelling in its familiarity.
The place a movie resembling Robert Zemeckis’ Right here approaches a comparable conceit with a trite wash of sentimentality and a cinematic gimmick, Sound of Falling opts for ambition and whole belief in its viewers, even throughout moments of realizing withholding. It’s a complicated puzzle field, powered by the sensory and sensual, and a sturdy assertion of intent from a vivid spark within the German filmmaking scene.