IMDb plot summary: A young man is ostracized by his classmates after he bullies a deaf girl to the point where she moves away. Years later, he sets off on a path for redemption.
Directed by Naoko Yamada. Starring Miyu Irino, Saori Hayami, Aoi Yûki, and Kenshô Ono.
(Spoilers ahead.)
This film has pieces that work really well but most of them don't come together into a satisfying whole. I'm willing to blame part of this disconnect on the badly translated subtitles I had on my copy of the film -- I could understand what was going on, but it wasn't eloquent, and I'd be willing to believe something got missed in that process. However, overall I had trouble buying into Ishida's redemption arc. Taking an overt bully and telling the story of him being victimized later requires some darn good storytelling to pull off, and it just feels haphazard here, which left me feeling very uncomfortable rooting for someone who was clearly in a lot of pain, but who had responded to that pain by bullying a disabled student out of her school. If you're going to tell this story, it has to be done carefully, and there was not a lot of care taken here. That being said, it has some really beautiful moments portraying the difficulty of living with mental illness -- I was particularly struck by the early scene of Ishida's mom frantically trying to make him promise not to attempt suicide again. But these great individual moments don't add up to a great movie.
How it entered my Flickchart:
A Silent Voice > Music Within
A Silent Voice < Extremities
A Silent Voice < 12 Angry Men (1997)
A Silent Voice > Blade
A Silent Voice > Now You See Me
A Silent Voice < Eyes Wide Shut
A Silent Voice > We Need to Talk About Kevin
A Silent Voice < The Last Unicorn
A Silent Voice > Following
A Silent Voice < The Call
A Silent Voice > Wide Awake
Final spot: #1163 out of 2940.
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