52 Films by Women Vol 9. 33. Silent Friend (Director: Ildikó Enyedi)
Enyedi, born in 1955 and a veteran of film festivals, has made a movie
that won’t appeal to large audiences. It is two-and-a-half-hours of delayed
gratification that climaxes in a resplendent reverse zoom of a magnificent
tree, orange and spectacular, two words that don’t normally go together. What
matters in the film is that an enthusiasm is shared. This is the communication
that counts.
Tony’s research, which opens the film, doesn’t begin with plants, rather
babies. He presents an object for his class to identify. The human brain? ‘No,’
he tells, ‘a brightly painted plastic object’. It represents the brain, but
Tony’s point is that we rely on ‘metaphor’ to understand the world. (Is
representation always metaphorical?) Tony describes human perception as the
operation of ‘spotlight consciousness’, the fixation on detail to the exclusion
of everything around us. However, a baby’s perception of the world differs from
an adult. They have ‘lantern consciousness’, perceiving everything around them
and being disturbed by changes; the term ‘floodlight consciousness’ is more
commonly used. Babies may be better at multi-tasking than adults since they
perceive different parts of their environment using different parts of the
brain. However, Tony’s work on the subject is paused when lockdown begins.
We are then transported back to 1908 – and into black and white. Student Grete (Luna Wedler) arrives at Marburg University to study botany and is quizzed by a panel of bearded elders, who complain that she gives more information in her answers than they have requested. She did not attend school in Germany since many institutions prohibited women from being educated. Having confirmed that she studied Latin, they ask for her to specify the full name of 18th Century Swedish botanist Carl Von Linné, that is Carl Linnaeus. They then ask for the full title of his area of study, too long for me to set out here. Grete answers impressively, but the panel means to unsettle her, by asking her Linneaus’ theories on plant reproduction from monandry – with one inseminator – to polyandry, with twenty males to one female. Describing Linneaus’ work as ‘complex’, Grete does not blanche. She is accepted for the course.
Later, she discovers that she was the only successful female candidate.
Eight other women applied, all given the same topic to prepare for, against
admission rules. A young man, Thomas (Johannes Hegemann) shows her a set of
identical tear-off slips to illustrate the point. Grete’s study is curtailed
after she is caught by a severe housekeeper holding a bedsheet containing [menstruation]
blood. Banished from her lodging, she applies for the job as an assistant to an
elderly photographer who initially treats her as a customer. The position
offers ‘bed and board’. Having taken her photograph, he is reluctant to hiring
her. Nevertheless, Grete learns how to position the light to avoid flattening
features or casting heavy shadows. She learns too how to focus the camera. ‘How
did you decide to become a photographer?’ she asks him. ‘Nobody has ever asked
me that,’ he replies. Before long, when her employer is elsewhere, Grete
photographs plants. We see them upside down in the camera’s viewfinder. Then
she starts photographing parts of her own body, including belly button and
pubic hair. When the university advertises an expedition to the East Indies,
she applies to join the team as a trained photographer. The students ply her
with drinks, some in test tubes, a nod to the polyandric fertilization of
plants.
Pictured: Contemplating nature, student Hannes (Enzo Brumm) in the 1972 section of writer-director Ildikó Enyedi's film, 'Silent Friend'. Still courtesy of Pandora Film.
The third section, set during a period of university unrest in the early
1970s, deals another Marburg student, Gundula (Marlene Burow) who complains of
a male student, Hannes (Enzo Brumm) entering her garden, before requesting his
assistance. The 1970s section is in colour and shot on film to better resemble
movies of the period. Hannes is captivated by Gundula’s devotion to a single
geranium, which she introduces from a distance – we see it through an open
window. Gundula has a strict regime for watering the plant (‘every four days’)
and has electrodes attached to it to record its changes in mood. She trusts
Hannes to look after it – and other plants – while she goes back packing.
Hannes starts experimenting, getting the plant to acknowledge him at various
distances – to recognise him. In an amusing turn of events, the geranium opens
the garden gate for him on arrival.
We wait for Hannes to show his modification – the training of a house
plant – to Gundula. Alas it does not happen. During a university sit-in, Hannes asks to
leave. Several male students follow him, eager for a drink. They disturb the
experiment, pouring alcohol on the plant. Hannes sends them away.
In the section set in 2020, Tony is introduced to Alice’s research. He
watches a video of the mimosa pudica, a plant otherwise known as ‘touch me
not’, that reacts to disturbance by way of its defence mechanism. The plant’s
sensitivity suggests comprehension of its environment and inspires botanists to
imagine that it could communicate. Tony attaches electrodes to the large gingko
tree and performs tai chi next to it. He is watched by a sceptical caretaker,
Anton (Sylvester Groth) who lodges an anonymous complaint. Tony discovers the
wires to each electrode have been cut.
Seydoux’s appearance is limited to conversations on a laptop. Alice is
housebound with a three-year-old child and unable to continue her research. She
offers Tony some sperm for the gingko tree, which arrives in Marburg by post.
Tony’s scenes are book-ended by meals. In the first (pre-Covid) where he
is welcomed, he is given the local speciality, a rack of lamb and a local beer.
Tony vomits at the foot of the gingko tree, little knowing that it would become
his area of study. By the end, Anton repairs the damage – or maybe the tree did
– and makes him a meal entitled ‘Himmel und Erde’ – Heaven and Earth. Tony
apologises for his behaviour using the translator app on his phone. Anton
doesn’t want him to talk, rather to eat, emphasising another form of unspoken
communication, shared ingestion as communion.
Tony’s work on babies suggested that infants were – in a way – ‘high all
the time’. The film begins with a pod oozing a white semen-like liquid,
isolated against a white background. Periodically, Enyedi shows us colourful
digital waves. Her film embraces the hallucinogenic. It is also sleep-inducing
in its early sections. The film is slow to engage us emotionally. When it does
so, it is on the basis on establishing human connections, shared enquiry, an
understanding that we always have more to discover.
How do you attract people to a film about research in progress?
Undoubtedly, Silent Friend is a
marketing challenge. At the screening I attended, viewers applauded when there
was no requirement for them to do so. Silent Friend talks up to
its audience, giving them a subject that they may already know something about
– botany 101 – but asks them to consider why women in particular would be
interested in the subject. Why not? The possibility of establishing ways to
communicate other than through violence or forceful intent. I can see the
appeal.
Comments
Post a Comment