Really, if you took what's right about A Quiet Place,
and what's right about The Silence
and put them together,
I think that that would be the movie of my dreams.
(playful tune)
Hi, hello, how are you?
Welcome back, today is another episode of Film Fridays
and we are going to be talking about the buzz around here.
A new movie called The Silence.
The Silence has been getting a lot of buzz
because it has essentially the same very basic plot
of A Quiet Place which is what I reviewed,
I will put up here on a card.
And people were criticizing it for being an exact copy.
So to give you a little bit of backstory,
The Silence is a 2015 novel
written by Tim Lebbon, a UK author,
and it is about 13 year old or 14 year old Ally
who loses her hearing three years ago in a car accident.
At one point in time, the news is breaking out
that there is some sort of like, wasp monster invasion
and just like A Quiet Place these things "vesps" are blind
and they rely on sound.
And to give you a little bit of
a history in terms of timeline:
The Bird Box novel came out in 2014,
The Silence novel came out in 2015
and A Quiet Place movie came out in 2018.
Just a quick disclaimer, just like with any other episode,
these thoughts are my own, my own opinion,
as my own singular deaf person.
Other people may disagree with what I have to say,
other people may agree
and what they might like I might not like.
So you know don't take my opinion as the only one.
Go out and read Twitter threads
from various other deaf people.
Also even though the original story took place in the UK
where they use BSL
I'm just going to say ASL
because we're talking about the movie,
just make things easier.
Let's start off with the bad so we can end with the good
and then I'm going to really end with
sort of a comparison between the two.
So one of the main negatives of The Silence
is the fact that a hearing actor
was casted as Ally the deaf character.
Kiernan Shipka who you may recognize
from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina plays Ally.
Kiernan is as hearing as a hearing person would be,
She doesn't know ASL and she learned ASL for the role.
The director claimed that Kiernan
was absolutely flawless in signing,
flawless as acting as a deaf person
and things like that.
I cannot really judge somebody's ASL knowledge
because I myself am not fluent.
So I will just leave this tweet that I saw.
Also, I've said this before,
but when you use SimCom
and a lot of SimCom was used in this movie,
it's going to be clunky anyway.
But even if you take that away,
a lot of the signs were really strange.
Like Nyle said, the sign for "walk",
she takes her right hand and walks on her left hand
and it doesn't really make any sense.
There were three ASL tutors for this film,
two in the United States
and one in Toronto, take that as you will.
Kiernan's facial expressions were also very,
both flat and stiff at the same time.
Somebody said on a tweet that
they were looking constipated a lot.
And it was just a lot of
almost the same exact face
that she does use in Sabrina.
And I felt like I was watching Sabrina for a second.
So yeah there's not a lot of
facial expressions going on, facial movement,
which is very important in sign language, so.
For a movie that was supposed to be all
about being silent and really using ASL to their advantage,
they didn't use ASL to their advantage.
They used it for about five minutes total.
I might be exaggerating how little it was
but you really didn't get a whole lot of it.
In the book BSL is used so much.
I remember a lot of text being in italics or something
because it was just,
that's how you communicated in the book.
That was the whole thing,
but in the movie they're constantly whispering.
And the reason for that is likely because
they want the hearing audience and a lot of people are like,
"I don't want to read subtitles."
I guess from a business standpoint,
that's where they were going
and I understand that sometimes you have
to make the right business moves.
But from an ethical, moral representation standpoint,
it fell flat.
But going back to that I've noticed this pattern,
I'm not the only one who noticed this
but when you have a hearing actor,
playing a deaf role that is fluent in ASL
and they have family or friends that also start learning it
or have learned it, the hearing friends, family, whatever,
always sign more and/or better
than the hearing actor playing the deaf character.
Ally's boyfriend, parents, all seem to have,
one, the better vocabulary and also just the flow
and whatnot, they just seem to sign better.
And even if they don't, which is,
you're new at it, it's fine.
It doesn't matter, I can't judge.
I'm not that great myself.
But the hearing people make more of an effort
than the actual deaf person, it's so weird to me.
So those were the (unconvinced sighing) things.
Let's go on to the good things.
The captions were awesome.
I know Netflix has an issue with captions
but also for the most part, they're good at adding captions.
But I felt like this was so much more detailed.
I've seen a lot of other movies and shows
that caption the audio cues
like knocking on doors and things.
But this was so detailed: thumping,
thumping gets louder, faster,
and women screaming and screaming louder, things like that.
The softest things get captioned.
It was really nice, I liked that, I liked that very much.
In the beginning, you see Ally get bullied,
mocked by her peers.
She's standing, I guess waiting for the bus
or something waiting to get picked up.
And there's these few jocks behind her
and they're mocking sign language
and mocking her deaf accent,
how she talks, things like that.
She's not really noticing what's going on.
But then she kind of feels something,
you just get that feeling that something's going on,
like you're being stared at.
And she looks up and the kids in front of her are laughing
and that's when she sees, okay, there's something going on,
turns around, catches the bullies
and they start to feel bad that they got caught.
And the way that she picked up on it
and just the fact that it happened are two very real things.
So good job on that. There is no fake deaf accent,
which I think is very spot on.
I mentioned this at Switched At Birth,
Daphne has a fake accent,
Katie does not sound like that in real life.
And I thought that you really didn't need
to have a fake accent because a lot of oral deaf people
don't have accents, you know, they might have just grown up
not having one or they were late deafened.
This is probably why.
Or you know, just a lot of speech therapy.
They probably just did that one because it's easier,
but also it does make sense because she was only deaf
three years ago, and you still get the same kind of speech
for a while, it may diminish at times as time goes by,
but for the most part,
it's not surprising that the same voice would stay.
They show that deaf people can date
and not only that deaf people can date
and have a boyfriend but a hearing and deaf relationship.
She has a hearing boyfriend who learns ASL for her.
(click)
And then of course she never signs back to him,
which is weird but anyway.
Actually, can we go back to a bad thing real quick?
When she's using the iPad and video conferencing
with her boyfriend, he's signing to her
but why is she not signing back to him,
when she supposed to be quiet
and she's yell whispering into the iPad for him to go.
It makes no sense.
Okay, back to the good things.
So yeah, even if hearing boyfriend may not be perfect,
he's learning and putting in the effort
and it's fantastic and they seem to have
a really good relationship.
At the end of the movie, they're still together,
still loving each other.
Perfect.
This movie recognizes that residual hearing is a thing
and I couldn't love it more.
For the most part, it seems that Ally can hear
deeper tones, she has a lot of ringing.
She can hear high pitch ringing.
And that's tinnitus.
Very common in deaf people, but very annoying.
But she seems to be able to hear very muffled,
mind you, because she lost a ton of her hearing,
barking from her dog and also I think when they run
into the guy with the gun near the beginning,
he has a very loud, deep voice.
And she was able to hear that muffled a little bit.
I've said this time and time again,
many, many, many, many, many deaf people,
have residual hearing, which fluctuates.
Sometimes we hear deep things,
sometimes we only hear high pitched things.
It is not mind boggling that she would be able to hear that.
I just liked that they're showing that
because a lot of people are like,
"How is she deaf if she can hear that?"
I also like the use of visual cues.
So with the dog again, when he notices
that the vesps are coming, his hair starts to stand up
and that gives her an idea as well
of you know, when something's about to happen.
Now, let's compare the two.
For me, I think I prefer The Silence with the story,
the character development,
there's more action that happens
and I just felt a lot more attached to the characters
than I did in A Quiet Place.
There was a lot of sacrifice, a lot of death, you know.
You got so close to the grandmother,
who eventually sacrificed herself and it was so sad.
And there's just more action that happens.
You get the beginning of the story before things go on,
and then they're moving from place to place
and they have interactions with other people.
I liked that it wasn't just one family,
in one house, just hiding there forever.
Except for that one rare encounter that they had
with somebody else.
And in The Silence you do get a little more backstory.
It's not a lot, but you do get a little bit of it.
Whereas in A Quiet Place, you don't really get much at all.
In The Silence, you know that they got trapped in a cave
and then they eventually evolved,
and then the miners broke it and then boom,
that's what happened.
In A Quiet Place, I've seen it twice
and I don't remember there really being
any sort of real backstory,
but A Quiet Place does get a little bit of a pass
because there is a sequel coming out.
So I imagine that they might use that opportunity
to give a little bit more information.
So I'm not going to completely like
fault the movie for that.
I personally found that the vesps were more interesting
than whatever the monsters were in A Quiet Place.
You had more interactions with the vesps in The Silence
and I don't know, they kind of just weirded me out
a little bit more.
Probably because you just saw so much of them.
You have the deaf character working more in The Silence
than in A Quiet Place.
Both dads in both movies were very overprotective,
but in The Silence, you kind of utilize Ally more
except movie Ally kinda sucks.
Let's be honest, if you've read the book,
you know book Ally is utilized way more,
and she plays more of the hero.
She is the main protagonist in the movie,
or in the book,
but in the movie, it's more like her dad
is the main protagonist, he's is doing all the work.
At the end of the day, A Quiet Place is so much better
with representation, the use of ASL,
the way that it shown in the film,
mannerisms because, hello, Millicent is deaf.
When the director of The Silence says that Kiernan
is living like a deaf person:
not really, I mean, she's not signing at all.
She's not using the language that has started to become
more of her main language, I guess.
She's not using her iPad enough
and the other things that she was doing in the book
and really helping out.
With A Quiet Place, you obviously get that feeling
of Millicent/Regan being deaf
because she just flat out is
and everything just makes more sense.
But really, if we could just mesh
A Quiet Place, what's good with A Quiet Place
and what's good what The Silence and put it together
to make it one big film, that would be a great movie to me.
I think that is the movie of my dreams
that I have been waiting for.
So those are my overall thoughts on The Silence
and also how it compares, in my opinion, to A Quiet Place.
If you enjoy reading, I highly, highly recommend
you get The Silence.
I think it's a great book.
It had so much more story, it had so much more
character development.
You get so much more use out of Ally,
a real deaf heroine, protagonist, et cetera, et cetera.
It's just so good.
Of course it's really hard to take a book
and condense it into a movie
and get everything...
Trust me, get the book.
If you've you seen The Silence,
let me know in the comments down below
what you thought of it.
I would love to know your opinion.
If you would like to help translate this video,
I'll have a link down below in the description box.
Always helps me out.
Thank you so much for watching.
I really do appreciate it and I will see you later.
Bye
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